\ 



I I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. | 

■, r 






Chap. 
Shelf 






UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. \ 




" LET US TAKE A WALK DOWN FLEET STEEET. 



THE 



HIGHWAY OF LETTERS 



AND 



ITS ECHOES OF FAMOUS FOOTSTEPS 



'iV\.v 




BY 

THOMAS ARCHER 

AUTHOR OF 

SIXTY YEARS OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PROGtRESS 

" DECISIVE EVENTS IN HISTORY " 

ETC. ETC. 






NEW YOHK 

ANSON I). F. RANDOLPH & COMPA.\'Y 

(iNCORrORATEI)) 

182 FIFTH AVENUK 



PREFACE 



In these days of ruthless removal of ancient land- 
marks, we never know for how long any locality may 
be spared to us. In London, at any rate, objects 
which to-day are so familiar to the wayfarer in the 
streets that he is ready to regard them as monuments, 
will to-morrow have disappeared, and he will be left 
idly gaping at an empty space, which gapes at him in 
return. 

The demolition of the remnant of some ancient 
houses in Fleet Street not unnaturally suggested 
that the street itself^ — latterly, with no architectural 
attractions except for some large and imposing piles 
of buildings here and there, incongruously breaking 
the sordid monotony of the shabby shops and houses 
— has been, since the first makers of English tra- 
versed it, " The Highway of Letters." It therefore 
seemed fitting that some kind of memorial should 
be written concerning it in that aspect. 

The present volume does not, it is almost needless 
to say, profess to be more than a gossipy reference to 
people and achievements which characterise the story 
of Fleet Street in its relation to the gTowth of litera- 
ture and to changes in social and political aspects at 
various periods. The book is intended to be a chatty 
indication of what might be expanded into a more 



iv PREFACE. 

elaborate chronicle ; but the author trusts that he 
may at least claim the merit of accuracy, secured by 
some research ; and though the vokmie may appear 
to consist of a series of desultory sketches, it is hoped 
that it will be found not only consecutive and sug- 
gestive, but entertaining. Should there arise a mur- 
mured objection that in some instances it extends its 
local references beyond the actual boundaries of the 
historical thoroughfare, it may be obvious that in 
order to preserve reasonable continuity some of the 
habitues of Fleet Street must be followed to other 

resorts. 

THOMAS ARCHER 

Clapton, March, 1893. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. 

WITH CHAUCER ON PLEET BRIDGE. 

The Highway of Letters before Printing — Tui'mnill Brook — River 
of Wells— Hole -bourne— The Fleet— The Palace and the 
Prison — ^Fleet Bridge — Aspect of Streets and Houses — 
Churches — Mansions — ' ' Mine Inn ' ' — Temple Bar — The 
Temple and the Templars — Old and New Settlements of 
Templars — Siu'vivals — Knights Hospitallers — Successors — 
Serjeants — Masters of the Rolls — The World of Letters — 
A Thousand Years before Milton — With Chaucer and Gower 
on Fleet Bridge — Good Company in Fleet Street — Costume — 
Eating and Drinking — " Boltas Mootes " — " Paradise " — 
Edward III. — John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster — Baynard's 
Castle — Wycliffe at St. Paul's Chiu'ch — Riots of the Citizens 
against Lancaster — Tumult in Fleet Street — Sack of the 
Savoy ..... 



CHAPTER II. 

vox CLAMANTIS IN FLEET STREET. 

The Strand— Char-Ing Cross— Wycliffe' s Writings— The Transla- 
tion of the Bible — Effect on Letters — "Vox Clamantis " — 
Langland — "Piers Plowman", — Papal Authority — Wat Tyler 
— Insurgents in Fleet Street — Wreck of the Temple Buildings 
—Ruin of the Savoy— The "Moral Gower"— The "Philo- 
sophical Strode" — Gower and the Young King — " Conf essio 
Amantis " — Henry of Lancaster— Gibbet and Stake in Fleet 
Street — St. Dunstan's— White Friars — Conduits — Fewter 
Lane — John Lydgate — Revival of English Literature — 
Occleve—Pecock— Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester— Outdoor 
Sports — Football in Fleet Street — Shire Lane — The MajqDole 
near Temple Bar — " London Lyckpenny " — John Harding — 
Thomas Fabyan — John Shirlej^ ... ... 40 



vi TBE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 

PAGE 

CHAPTEE III. 

THE GOOD DUKE HrMPHREY, 

Good Duke Humphrey — Witchcraft in Baynard's Castle— Eleanor 
Cobham's Penance in Fleet Sti-eet — Sorcery — Eoid Play — 
Whittington — Grey Friars and Guildhall Libraries — Value 
and Accumulation of Books in Fleet Street — The Stationers' 
Company — The Wardrobe Accounts — Stationers' HaU — 
Edward of York at Baynard's Castle — The Earl of Warwick 
in Fleet Sti-eet — The Eed and White Eoses — Eichard of 
Gloucester — His Patronage of Learning — William Caxton at 
Bruges — Meeting of Edward IV. and Caxton — Earl Eivers' 
Book— The Mazaria Bible— Fii-st "Block" Piinting— Mov- 
able Types — Early Printers— The "Eeed Pale" by the 
Almom-y — Fii'st Books Printed in England — The Paston 
Letters 6Q 

CHAPTEE IV. 

THE XEW LEARNING, 

The Study of Greek — Greek Philosophy in the Highway of Letters 
— Liaacre — The College of Physicians in Knightrider Street : 
At Amen Comer : In Warwick Lane — TheFaculty — Garth and 
"The Dispensary" — Hai-vey — Colet — Lily — Fisher, Bishop of 
Eochester — Thomas More — Pynson, the King's Printer, by 
St. Dunstan's Church — Wynkynde Worde at the " Sun " — Sir 
John More on Marriage — Cardinal Morton — The Bishop's 
Strawberries — Thomas More, Under- Sheriff of London — 
Famous Footsteps in Fleet Street 86 

CHAPTEE V. 

KING, CARDINAL, AND SATIRIST. 

Wolsey in Chancery Lane — A Harmony in Crimson— In the Palace 
of Bridewell — The Fall of Wolsey — Gorgeous Pageantry in 
Fleet Street— The Marching Watch— The Highway of Letters 
at Xight — Wholesale Hangiug — Horn Lantern Bearers — The 
Bellman — Milton — Herrick — John Skeltou — His Lampoons 
on Wolsey -" Speke Parrot "—The Star Chamber ... 96 



CHAPTEE VI. 

POETS AND PRINTERS IN PLEET STREET. 

Falstaff and his Companions in the Fleet Pnson — Sii" Thomas Wyatt 
— Henry Howard, Earl of Sm-rey — The New Poetry — The 
Ballade, the Sonnet, and the Eondeau — Wyatt in Prison — 



CONTENTS. vii 

PAGE 

Surrey's Frisk in the City —He is sent to the Fleet — 
"Wyatt's Death — Siirrey's Sentence and Execution — The 
Seymours — The Howards — Tottell, of Fleet Street, prints the 
New Poetry — John Jaggard — Joel Stephens — Shakespeare at 
the " Hand and Star " -Successors of Caxton in the Highway 
of Letters— Early Printing and Publishing Stationers— The 
Stationers' Company — Printing the Bible — Tyndal — Miles 
Coverdale— Cranmer— The Matthew Bible— The "Great" 
Bible— The "Bishops'" Bible— Printing in France— Whit - 
chui-ch and Grafton in Fleet Street— Grafton in the Fleet 
Prison — Early Printed Books Ill 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE DISPEKSION OF LIBRARIES. 

Valuable MSS. — The Accumulation of Rare Copies — Benefactors to 
Letters— The Slow Growth of Printing— Obligations of Book 
Borrowers — A Bishop's Warning —Oxford Library — Its Dis- 
persion by "Visitors" under Edward VI. — Tiptoft's Contri- 
butions to Letters — Destruction of Abbeys and Churches 
by Thomas Cromwell — Leland's " Itinerary " — Hall's 
"Chronicle" 129 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE ECLIPSE OF LETTERS. 

The Boy King in the Highway of Letters — His Learning — Sir John 
Cheke — Roger Ascham — Bishop Gardiner — Sir Humphrey 
Wingfield— The Book and the Bow— Italian Tales— The 
King's Journal — Ubaldini — Bonner and Gardiner in the 
Fleet — The Grey Friars — A Palace converted to a Reforma- 
tory — Foundation of" Christ's Hospital — "Blue Coat Boys" 
who walked in the Highway of Letters — Bishop Hooper in 
the Fleet — Queen Mary in Fleet Street — Wyatt's Rebellion — 
Persecutions — The Charter of the Stationers' Company — 
Suppression of Free Printing — Elizabeth and the Stationers — 
Fox — "The Acts and Monuments" — Day, the Printer — 
Oporinus — Grub Street . . 136 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY. 

The Heavy Crown — Elizabeth in the Highway of Letters — Printers 
— Chroniclers — John Stow in Fleet Street — His "Annals," 
' ' Chronicle," and ' ' Survey " — Thynne — Reprints of Chaucer — 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 

PAGE 

With Stow fi-om Bajmard's Castle to Temple Bar — Lord Pem- 
broke — EUzabeth at Baynard's Castle — Dissolution of the 
Black Friars — Liberty of the Friary — Hunsdou House — Pollu- 
tion of the Fleet — Conduits — Shoe Lane — Tankard Bearers — 
Lambe's Conduit — Fleet Street Taverns — Eating and Drink- 
ing—Venison — The Fleet Prison — Inns of Law — The Temple — 
Pageants, Masques, Comedies, Tragedies, Interludes — Dancing 
— The Dancing of Elizabeth — The "Pavo" — Gambling — 
"Primero" — "Noddy" — "Mne Men's Monis" — Sahsbuiy 
Court — Sir Thomas Sackville — White Friars — " Sanctuary " 
— A New Temple Bar — Stow a Typical Londoner — His Long 
Life and Labour — His Library — His Devotion to Letters — 
His Reward — His Monument 159 



CHAPTER X. 

THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. 

The Highway of Letters in the days of Elizabeth — Coui-tiers — 'Pren- 
tices — Flattery and Fashion — Taverns in Fleet Street — High 
Living and High Thinking — Wigs and Ruffs — Shows and 
Amusements — Inn Yards— Stage Plays — Thames Watermen 
— ^From Temj)le Staii's to Bankside — ^Bankes — Tarleton — 
Defeat of the Annada — Procession fi'om Somerset House to 
St. Paul's — Fii'st Coaches — Taylor, the Water Poet — The 
Queen at Blackfriars — Rare Doings at the " Horn " Tavern — 
Witty and Wise at the "Mermaid" — Raleigh — Bacon — Build- 
ings and tlieii- Occupiers in Fleet Street 175 



CHAPTER XI. 

DRAMATISTS, PLAYS AND PLAYERS. 

Common Plays and Players — Childi'en of the Revels — The Fii'st Eng- 
Ush Comedy — Udall — Masques — Interludes — John Heywood 
— Rastell the Tvinter— Gajn/ner Girrto/i^a Needle — Gorhoduc 
— Sackville at Salisbury House — Classical Learning — "The 
MiiTor for Magistrates " — Thomas Norton — Stemhold and 
Hopkins — Origin of the ' ' Old Hundredth ' ' — Performances 
in the Middle Temple — Christopher Hatton — "Gloriana" 
— Spenser — Raleigh — Sidney — The ' ' Arcadia ' ' — Countess 
of Pembroke — The Euphuists — Lyly — Campaspc^ played by 
"Her Majesty's Children" — Singing and Acting Boys — 
Opposition to Stage Plays — Licences and Privileges to Actors 
as "Servants" to Noblemen — The Earl of Leicester — Bur- 
bage's Company and the Fu'st Theatres — Sir* Philip Sidney's 
Description of the Stage — Dramatists and Actors in Fleet 
Street — Peele — Greene — Marlowe — The Young Man from 



CONTENTS. ix 

PAGE 

Stratford -on -Avon — Ben Jonson on Shakespeare — Absurd 
Stories about the Great Dramatist — Aubrey's Gossip — The 
Theatre in Blackfriars — The Company of Players —;;B en 
Jonson in the " Apollo " at the " Devil and Saint Dunstan " 
Tavern — Shakespeare's Early Plays 189 



CHAPTEE XII. 

THE " SEPARATISTS " IN BRIDEWELL. 

Early Nonconformists — The Church formed in Bridewell Prison — 
Persecution of the Separatists — Gaol Fever — Fitz — Barrowe — 
Greenwood — The Queen's Compunction — Predecessors of the 
Pilgrim Fathers — ^Preston's Cainbi/ses — Shakespeare's Plays 
Printed— The Impending Fate of Raleigh— King James on 
his way to London— The Star Chamber— Sir Eobert Kllli- 
grew and the Countess of Dorset in the Fleet Prison— Prose- 
cutions of Printers — Secret Publications — Pamphlets and 
Libels — The Rule of Elizabeth and of James I. compared . 221 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE "mermaid," THE '' DEVIL," AND THE " MITRE." 

Shakespeare's Dramas Acted and Printed — The Winter Theatre in 
Blackfriars — Ben Jonson — Tobacco at the Theatres — Ran- 
dolph — The " Bricklayer "—Jonson' s Duel— The Childi-en of 
the Chapel— Salathiel Pavy— Fleet Street Shows— Jonson' s 
Plays, Masques, and Revels — High Jinks at Com-t — Herrick— 
The "Apollo" — Leges Conviviales — Dick's — Lilly, the 
Astrologer — The Royal Society — The Society of Antiquaries — 
Sii" Hugh Myddelton and the New River — Cowley . . . 233 



CHAPTER XIV. 

BEFORE AND AFTER THE FIRE. 

Increased Number of Coaches — Taylor, the "Water Poet — Tobacco 
— ^The ' ' Counterblast ' ' — Shoe Lane — Bangor House — Izaak 
Walton — General Monk in Fleet Street — John Florio — De- 
creetz — Lovelace — His Grave in St. Bride's — Pepys at the 
Cockpit — Hogarth in Harp Lane— Oldbourne Hall — Bishop 
Dolben — St. Andrew's Workhouse — Chatterton — An Obliter- 
ated Graveyard — St. Bride's Chiu'ch — Richardson — Sta- 
tioners' HaU— Portraits— Steele— The Company's Plate— The 
School — Milton in Fleet Street — Lilburne — Prynne — Andrew 
Marvell— Oliver Cromwell— Fetter Lane .... 279 



X TEE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER XV. 

AYHITEFRIARS AXD THE PLAY-HOUSES. 

Salisbury Coui't — Dorset Gardens — The Davenants — Bettertou — 
Han-is — Killigrew — The King's and the Duke's Theatres — 
Privilege of Sanctuary— " Alsatians " — Templars and 'Pren- 
tices — Censorship of the Press — Prosecution of Printers — 
Mutilation of Books 300 

CHAPTER XVI. 

EARLY NEWSPAPERS AND PAMPHLETS. 

The Mercuries — Scm-iilous News-letters — Pepys in Fleet Street — His 
Diary— The Court— The Stage— Prize Fights- The Rump- 
Coaches — Elias Ashmole — Freemasonry — Lilly, the Astrologer 
— Roasting the Rumps in Fleet Street — The Great Fire — St. 
Dunstan's and the Giants — Ned Ward — Cowper — The Book- 
sellers — Tokens — The ' ' Rainbow ' ' — The ' ' Cock ' ' — Tennyson 
in the Highway of Letters — Will Waterproof — "The Violet 
of a Legend amidst the Chops and Steaks " — Pepys Making 
Merry at the " Cock " — Bankers in Fleet Street — The Grab of 
the Stuarts — Child's Bank — Sir Christopher Wren — Titus 
Gates — Roger North at the Green Dragon — Petitioners and 
Abhorrers — Burning the Pope at Temple Bar — The New 
Temple Bar — The Heads above it— Goldsmith and Johnson — 
Aubrey — Dryden — Great Preachers in Fleet Street— Will's 
Coffee-house — Addison — Defoe . . . . . .311 

CHAPTER XVII. 

THE "COFFEE-HOUSES." 

Daniel Defoe — His Ups and Downs — Jonathan Swift— Gay's 
"Trivia" — Dunton the Publisher — Jacob Tonson — Bernard 
Lintot— The Court at Kensington — Will's Coffee-house — 
Steele and Addison — Button's Coffee-house — Pope and Vol- 
taire — A Picturesque Age — Nando's Coffee-house — A ScuiTil- 
ous Publisher — The Kit-Kat Club — Francis Atterbury and 
Joseph Butler 353 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 

Jolmson in the Highway of Letters — Dryden, Swinney, and Cibber 
at Will's— Boswell — Pope and Johnson's Poem — The Friends 
who sought Johnson's Company — Johnson's Maniage— Lucy 



CONTENTS. xi 

PAGE 

Porter — Portrait of Mrs. Johnson by Garrick — The Adelphi — 
The Literary Club — Fanny Burney — Johnson and Garrick — 
Johnson's Portrait by Eeynolds — Hogarth — Eichardson — 
Mrs. Thrale — Her Anecdotes of Johnson — Her Marriage with 
Piozzi— Oliver Goldsmith in Green Ai'bour Court and Wine 
Office Coui't— Meetings at the " Old Cheshire Cheese " — Miss 
Eeynolds — The UgUest Man — Eeynolds' Fees for Portraits — 
The " Eetahation "— The " Vicai- of Wakefield "—Mr. New- 
bery, the PubHsher — Eichardson at Home — Mrs. Barbauld — 
Sir John Hawkins — John Wilkes and the North Triton in 
Fleet Street — Meeting of Wilkes and Johnson — The St. 
Dunstan's Club 383 



CHAPTEE XIX. 

THE CLOSE OF AN ERA IN THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 

The Mug-house Eiots— Eead'sin Salisbury Cotui; — The Fleet Prison 
— William Penn — Eichard Savage — Huggins and Bam- 
bridge — Horrible Cruelties — The Commission of Enquiry 
— Hogarth's Pictui-e — The Gordon Eiots — John Scott, Lord 
Eldon— William Scott, Lord StoweU— " The Perch," in 
Cursitor Street— Love and Law — Sprat Suppers — " Crocodile " 
Eldon — Diamond Cut Diamond — The Later Days of Dr. 
Johnr.on — The Thrales and the Eiots — Death of Mr. Thrale 
— Marriage of Mrs. Thrale and Piozzi — Death of Dr. Johnson 
— From Fleet Street to Westminster Abbey — The House in 
Bolt Court — Stationers' Company — Newspapers — Eeports of 
Debates Forbidden — Abbreviated Accounts of Proceedings — 
" Liberty of the Press " — Newspapers in 1818 and in 1893 . 419 



CHAPTEE XX. 

SUCCEIJSOKS or DR. JOHNSON — CHARLES LAMB. 

Carlyle's Portrait of Lamb — Brother and Sister — Hoole—" Omni- 
scient Jackson" — Benchers of the Temple — Charles and Mary 
Lamb in Crown Office Eow— The School in Fetter Lane — Mr. 
Starkey — At Large iu a Library — The Temple Buiial Ground 
— Christ's Hospital — Coleridge — Poverty — Needlework — The 
Shadow of a Boy's Love — WilHam and Dorothy Wordsworth 
— Hazlitt — The Lambs in Chancery Lane — In Mitre Court 
Biuldiags— Supper Parties — Godwin Dyer — Crabbe Eobin- 
son — Holcroft — Barry Cornwall — Inner Temple Lane — 
Mary Lamb as a Teacher and Adviser — Emma Isola — Hay- 
don — Keats — Eitcliie— Tom Hood — Keats' Lodging in Cheap- 
side — Leigh Hunt — A Narrowing Circle — Edmonton — De 



xii THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 

PAGE 

Quiucey's Estimate of Lamb — Lamb's Contribution to News- 
papers — The Examiiwr — Leigh. Hunt in Prison — His Visitors 
— His Pxison Bower — B3T.'on — Scott — MuiTay .... 449 

CHAPTER XXI. 

A TRANSITION IN THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 

Scurrilous Papers— TAe Age — The Satirist — Westmacott — Gregory 
—The To 2r;?— "Baron" Nicholson— The John i?^?//— Theo- 
dore Hook — Ligoldsby — Rogers — Secoud Editions — The 
Courier — Charles Knight — His Epitaph by JeiTold — Charles 
Dickens — "Pickwick " — " Oliver Twist " — Changing Aspects 
of London — Household Words — Tunch — Mark Lemon — The 
Shakespeare's Head — TheMayhews — T\\.QTunch Staff — Leech 
— Albert Smith — ]\Iaginn— The New Timon — Tennyson versus 
Bulwer Lytton, in Punch — Thackeray — Grus Mayhew's Intro- 
duction to the Illustrated london Neics — Douglas Jerrold — 
Iloi/d's Weekly Newspaper — The "Train-band" — Mr. G-. A. 
Sala — The Savage Club — Fun and its Staff — Tom Robertson 
— Hemy S. Leigh — Hemy Byron — William Jeffery Prowse — 
W. S. Gilbert and Sii- Arthur Sullivan— Mr. Clement Scott- 
Mr. J. Ashby-Sterry — John Crawford "Wilson and the White 
Friars — The Golden Highway 472 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 

" Let us take a Walk down Fleet Street " . Frontispiece 

Armohial Device op Inner Temple 1 

A Knight Templar 4 

Rotunda of the Temple Church 9 

The Original Priory Church of St. John, Clerkenwell . 11 

The Old Tabard Inn . .12 

Chaucer as a Pilgrim 13 

The Man of Law .16 

The Wife of Bath 17 

The Squire 20 

The Miller 25 

The Friar 28 

The Pardonee 33 

Lydgate Contemplating the Wheel of Fortune ... 40 

Old Charing Cross 44 

Wycliffe . . .45 

The Lollards' Prison, Lambeth Palace .... 48 

John Gower 49 

Richard 11. . . . . . . . . . .53 

Gower Shooting at the World 56 

Priory of St. Mary Overy 61 

Stow's Monument in the Church of St. Andrew Under- 

SHAFT 64 

Tomb of Gower in St. Saviour's, South wark . . .65 

A Paston Letter 66 

Baynard's Castle 73 

Old Houses Recently Demolished in Fleet Street . . 76 

Early Printing 80 

A Modern Printing Machine . . . . . .81 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



AFTER THE 



Fall of 



Fac-simile of Caxton's Printing 

College of Physicians, Warwick Lane — The Quadrangle 

Emblematic Detice . 

Thomas More .... 

The Island of Utopia 

WOLSEY 

Hall of Ely HorsE in 1772 . 
Lud-Gate ..... 
Old St. Paul's, with the Spire 
Old St. Paul's, from the South- 

THE Spire . 
Sir Thomas Wyatt . 
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey 
Plan of Fleet Street in 1563 
Preacher's Hour- G-l ass . 
Cheapside Cross in 1547, showln^g Part of 

OF Edward VI. to his Coronation 
Latimer Preaching before Edward YI. 
Edward YI. Eeceiting a Book from John Bale 
Gateway of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 1750 
John Fox 



the Procession 



Cap of Fool in Old Play .... 
Map of Neighbourhood of St. Paul's in 1540 
Properties of Yice and Fool in Old Play . 

Old Serjeants' Inn 

Old Temple Bar, Erected in the Reign of James I. 

Richard Tarleton 

Inner Court of the Belle Sauvage 

The Fool of the Old Play .... 

Inner Court of Gresham's Royal Exchange 

Frontispiece to Bacon's "No-^ttm Organum " 

Border from the "Mirror for Magistrates' 

From Title-page to Induction to " Mirror for ^Magistrates 

Ralph Roister-Doister 

Publisher's Mark on Title-page of Second Part 
Faerie Queene " .... 

The Red-Cross Knight 

Tail-piece from Lyly's '-Euphues" 



OF "The 



FAGE 

85 
86 
89 
92 
93 
95 
97 
102 
105 

108 
113 
118 
121 
135 



137 
140 
145 
149 
157 
159 
161 
165 
168 
173 
176 
177 
180 
185 
187 
189 
192 
193 

197 
200 
204 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xv 

PAGE 

The Good Shepherd (Oknament) ...... 205 

ElCHARD BURBAGE 208 

The Globe Theatre, ton}). Elizabeth 213 

From the Title-page to Egbert Greene's " Groundwork 

OF Coney Catching". ...... 216 

Old Theatre Check 217 

Another View of the Globe Theatre ..... 219 

Tail-piece from the " Mirror for Magistrates " . . 220 

Plan of Bankside Early in the Seventeenth Century . 221 

Old Houses at Bankside ....... 224 

The Marshalsea in the Eighteenth Century . . . 225 

Bridewell .......... 229 

The Star Chamber 231 

St. Mary Overy 236 

Somerset House and Stairs before their Demolition . 240 

The Eleet Ditch ......... 245 

The Temple in 1671 248 

The Bolt-in-Tun, 1859 256 

The Eoyal Society's House in Crane Court . . . 264 

Old St. Dunstan's Church 273 

The Savoy in 1650 277 

From a Folio of Ben Jonson's Works, 1641 . . . 278 
Richardson Reading from the MS. of " Sir Charles Gran- 

dison" 279 

Outer Court of La Belle Sauvage, 1828 .... 280 

The "Black Lion," Whitefriars . . . . . .281 

IzAAK Walton's House at the Corner of Chancery Lane . 284 

Old St. Paul's School, 1750 289 

Virtue and Innocence at the Tomb of "Clarissa" . . 292 
Interior of (the present) Stationers' Hall . . .293 

Portrait of Steele ........ 297 

House said to have been Occupied by Dryden in Fetter 

Lane 301 

Dorset Gardens Theatre . . . . . . .305 

Roasting the Rumps in Fleet Street at the Restoration . 313 

Old St. Dunstan's Clock 321 

Child's Bank in 1850 329 

West Front of Temple Bar in 1710 . . . . . 337 



xvi THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 

PAGE 

Ornament from Burnet's " History of His Own Time " . 352 
Publisher's Mark for Title-page of Second Part of 

" KoBiNSON Crusoe" 353 

Ornament from "The Further Adventures of Robinson 

Crl'Soe" 360 

"Lemuel Gulliver" ...... . . 361 

Jacob Tonson 369 

Frontispiece to "The Rape of the Lock" .... 377 
Ornament from the Title-page to Pope's Works . .381 

Painted Ceiling over the Pit of Goodman's Fields Theatre 383 

Samuel Johnson 393 

Hogarth 400 

CoGERs' Hall .......... 405 

Sophia Rescued . 409 

The Trial of Wilkes 416 

Wedding in the Fleet 421 

Johnson's Pevt in St. Clement Danes' 428 

GouGH Sql^are 433 

Johnson's House in the Temple . . . . . .441 

Screen of the Middle Temple Hall 450 

Old Hall of the Inner Temple 453 

Sundial in the Temple 457 

"Goldsmith's Tomb" IN 1860 461 

William Wordsworth 463 

The Cloisters of Christ's Hospital 464 

The Western Quadrangle of Christ's Hospital, about 1780 465 

Wig Shop in the IMiddle Temple 471 

Thomas Carlyle 480 

Street Front of the Fleet Prison ..... 485 

Wine Office Court and the " Cheshire Cheese " . . 489 



THE 



HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



CHAPTER I. 



WITH CHAUCER ON FLEET BRIDGE. 

The Highway of Letters before Printing — Turnmill Brook — River 
of Wells — Hole-bourne — The Fleet — The Palace and the Prison 
— Fleet Bridge — Aspect of Streets and Houses — Churches — 
Mansions — "Mine Inn" — Temple Bar — The Temple and the 
Templars — Old and New Settlements of Templars — Survivals 
— Knights Hospitallers — Successors— Serjeants — Masters of the 
Eolls — The World of Letters — A Thousand Years before Milton 
— With Chaucer and G-ower on Fleet Bridge— Good Company 
in Fleet Street — Costume — Eating and Drinking — "Boltas 
Mootes" — "Paradise" — Edward III. — John of Graunt, Duke of 
Lancaster — Baynard's Castle — WyclifEe at St. Paul's Church — 
Eiots of the Citizens against Lancaster — Tumult in Fleet Street — 
Sack of the Savoy. 

Fleet Street may be said to 
have been " tlte Highivay of 
Letters" long before William 
Caxton set up his printing 
press at the Almonry in 
Westminster — long before 
printed books had been seen 
in England or on the Conti- 
nent of Europe. 

When the Tower of Lon- 
don was a royal residence at the eastern extremity 




AEMOEIAL DEVICE OF INNER 
TEMPLE. 



2 TEE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [I. 

of the City, the Castle called " the King's Wardrobe," 
and the Great Palace of Bridewell, named after the 
Well of St. Bridget, were the dwellings of the 
Sovereign in the western or fashionable quarter, 
represented by the bank of the River Thames 
beyond Ludgate and the vicinity of "the River 
of Wells." This river was chiefly fed by Clerken- 
well, Skinner's Well, and other springs in the 
northern suburb, where sundry mills belonging to 
the Knights Templars and other persons were worked 
by water power. It was called Turnmill Brook, till it 
received the water of the Old, or Hole Bourne,* and 
so went brawling, with much accelerated movement, 
past the Royal Prison — in Farringdon — where it took 
the name of the Fleet, the Saxon word for a navigable 
inlet. It flowed beneath a bridge of timber at the 
foot of Ludgate Hill, and passed the Palace of Bride- 
well, before it flashed into the Thames, having given 
its name to the broad straggling thoroughfare leading 
from the said Fleet Bridge to the Temple. This 
thoroughfare, the highway from the Tower and by 
Chepe to Westmonester, was the resort of the aris- 
tocracy when the Court was in London, and the 
barons and nobles came home from the wars. The 
fashionable promenade was in the Temple and in the 
nave and aisles of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, 
the vast and magnificent building on the crown of Lud- 
gate Hill, where a multitude of chantry priests offici- 
ated all day long, and the shrine of St. Erkenwald, 

* Hole bourne, or stream in a hollow, same derivation as Holland 
(HoUow Land). 



I] FLEET STREET FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 3 

glowing with gold and gems — only more sumptuous 
than other shrines in the stupendous edifice — vied 
with the high altar itself in imposing splendour. 

The great Cathedral occupied a larger area than 
that which is covered by the present building, and 
the eastern front and portico stood in a somewhat 
different position, being turned more towards the 
river and the gate of Lud, which opened in the 
City wall rather to the south-west. 

Early in the fourteenth century many of the 
houses in Fleet Street were only mean tenements 
built of wood and plaster, with roofs of thatch or 
straw ; but the frequent fires by which such structures 
were destroyed gave opportunities for improvement 
which are not enjoyed by our present sanitary 
authorities in dealing with more modern foul and 
dilapidated dwellings. By the end of the reign of 
Edward III. many houses in London streets were 
rebuilt with roofs of slates and tiles. They were 
still poor dwellings, many of them little better 
than hovels ; but in the main streets the quaint 
and picturesque form of building, the high-pitched 
roof and gables, the projecting upper storeys, the 
open shops or stalls beneath, the rudiments of 
ornamental designs and traceries on the wooden or 
plaster fronts, the carved beams of timber, the 
quaintly-pictured sign-boards, gave colour and variety 
to a street more gay, varied, and picturesque than the 
present dingy paid sordid thoroughfare. 

Here and there were to be seen churches, notably 
those of St. Bridget and St. Duns tan, associated with 

B 2 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



[[. 



the houses of religious fraternities, such as the Do- 
minicans and the CarmeHtes. Approached from the 

main thoroughfare by tributary 
streets and lanes were some of 
the spacious inns, or London 
mansions, of the bishops, 
barons, or nobles ; for at that 
time "inn" meant dwelling, 
and the question, " Shall I not 
take mine ease at mine inn ? " 
v/as to be interpreted, " Am 
I not to study my own com- 
fort in my o^vn house ? " At 
the end of the highway of 
Fleet Street, near where the 
bar and balks of timber with 
chains crossing the roadway 
marked the boundary between 
City and County at Shire 
Lane, were the extensive 
buildings, the superb and 
solemn church, and the plea- 
sant gardens extending to the 
river, which had lately formed the settlement of the 
famous Knights Templars. They had built this new 
abode after their removal from their older settlement 
in Holborne. 

Near those earlier dwellings of the Templars Avere 
the Inn of the Bishop of Lincoln, and the Inn of the 
Furnivals, knights who went with Richard Coeur de 
Lion to Palestine. The old " Temple " in Holborne 




A KKIGHT TEirPLAE, 



I.] TEMPLARS AND HOSPITALLERS. 5 

was built soon after tlie foundation of tlie order of 
Knights Templars in 1118, and though no remnant 
of it is supposed to remain, it was not all pulled down 
till 1595. It is claimed by the proprietor of Wood's 
Hotel in Furnival's Inn, that a room in that estab- 
lishment occupies the site of the chapel, and is 
partly formed of the last remaining portion of it. 
This room is still set apart for the morning and 
evening prayers that are, or were lately, observed 
there for the benefit of visitors to the hotel, which 
is seldom, if ever, without a clergyman among its 
guests. 

The stately figures of the Templars ceased to ap- 
pear in Fleet Street when their powerful, wealthy, 
and arrogant order was dissolved by the Papal edict, 
supporting the demands of those Sovereigns who were 
as much alarmed at the vast assumptions of inde- 
pendent authority by the Knights of the Ked Cross, 
as they professed to be concerned at the alleged de- 
clension of moral and religious principles in that once 
pious order. 

The community of the Templars was originally 
founded as a society of Soldiers of the Cross — 
professing poverty, chastity, humility, and devo- 
tion. It was both monastic and military in its 
rule, and its first objects — like those of the 
Order of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jeru- 
salem — were the aid and relief of pilgrims to the 
Holy Landj and the defence of the sites of the 
Holy Sepulchre and the Temple after the first 
Crusade. 



6 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [I. 

The "Hospitallers," or Knights of St. John of 
Jerusalem, had been organised before the death of 
Godfrey de Bouillon, and in 1100 were attending sick 
pilgrims in the hospital which they had built, near 
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre erected by the 
Emperor Constantine. The dress distinguishing the 
Hospitallers was a black mantle with a white cross on 
the shoulder, and their first organiser was a French 
knight, Raymond Dupuy. In 1118 Hugo de Payens, 
with some knightly companions, founded the Order of 
the Temple, and while they faithfully kept their vow 
of poverty and owned nothing except in trust for the 
succour of the poor, they grew in wealth as well as in 
numbers and mfluence. Though they were meant to 
be, in a sense, a military order, the tAvo founders, 
Hugo de Payens and Godfrey de St. Omer, had but 
one war-horse between them ; and this was considered 
so emblematic of their poverty that the device of two 
armed knights riding on one horse became the seal 
and badge of the order ; and remained such when 
the Templars had attained to such wealth and 
splendour that the arrogance of their chiefs became 
unbearable. At their institution, the members (in 
their priestly or monkish character) adopted the 
rule of the canons and monks of St. Augustine, who 
were also in Jerusalem. Their distinctive garb was a 
white mantle with a red cross on the shoulder. And 
as their courage was undaunted and their ambition 
boundless, they became, after a time, of as much 
importance as the Hospitallers. That the two orders 
should be bitterly opposed when they began to seek 



I." MODEBX -GBAXD MAS TEES" OF TEMPLAES. 7 

wealth and power was, perhaps, inevitable. Certain it 
is that at length they came to open warfare, and 
numbers perished in a pitched battle fought to decide 
which was the stronger. The later failure of the 
Crusades, with the loss of those objects for which 
thcA' were professedly undertaken, was largely to 
be attributed to the desperate conflicts of the 
two orders of knights of obedience, poverty, and 
humihty. Doubtless the immense wealth of 
the Templars, theh sumptuous dwellings and mode 
of Hving, added to their contemptuous repudia- 
tion of any subjection to external authority, led to 
the dissolution of the order and the seizure of their 
possessions. 

As old Fuller says, it may have been a case of 
burning the bees to get the honey, and certainly the 
Templars were accused of some crimes and profanities 
their commission of which was obviously incredible, 
if not absolutely impossible. 

The torture and execution of the Cxrand Master, 
Jacques de Molay, and his officers and companions, in 
Paris, was the beginning of that suppression which 
lasted fi'om 1307 to 1312, but it is clauned by the 
Masonic Order of Templars of the present day that 
the institution itself was real and could not be 
destroyed, though the enormous property was con- 
fiscated : that a successor to de Molay was at once ap- 
pointed ; and that nominations and installations have 
been continued to the present time. Among the 
names of the later Grand Masters are those of the 
Puke of Sussex and Admiral Sir Sidney Smith, the 



8 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTEBS. [I. 

present Grand Master being His Rojal Highness the 
Prince of Wales.* 

In the stately and extensive buildings and the 
church which the Templars erected in the pleasant 
garden on the bank of the Thames in Fleet Street, 
and called ''The New Temple," not only gold and 
jeAvels, but treasures from the world of letters were 
accumulated, treasures which a brotherhood with. 
many learned members had collected in their librar}^ 
The existing round church, or temple — really of 
octagonal shape, in the form of the Church of the 
Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem — was part of the first 
building erected in 1185, and over the door of the 
httle cloister on the south side it was inscribed, in 
Saxon characters, that the building was dedicated 
by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem. The choir, a 
buildmg of the Early Enghsh order of architecture, 
was not finished till 1240. The restorations that had 
become necessary in 1839 — partly because of the 
depravity of taste which had overlaid the ancient 
ornamentations with plaster, whitewash, and wooden 
coverings — were thorough, and cost £70,000, but so 
much of the genume character of the original Temple 
Church has been preserved (the more secular build- 
ings having been destroyed by the insurgents under 
Wat Tjder and Jack Cade) that we can still imagine 
the scene of seven centuries ago — Avhen in the 

* An interesting and lively sketch, of the institution, history and 
suppression of the order was recently published for private cii'culation 
by Col. George Lambert, F.S.A., Warden of the Regalia of the Order 
of Templars, and Member of that Order and of the Order of Masonic 
Knights Hospitallers, 




EOTTJNDA or THE TEMPLE CHUECH. 



10 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [I. 

" Kound " Temple the knights met for rehgious 
service. The Templars' churches were of the sam.e 
form at Cambridge, Northampton, and Maplestead, 
in Essex, where the order also had settlements, but 
not in their foundations at Bristol, Canterbury, Dover, 
and Warwick. 

The important part taken in the Crusades by the 
Templars, and in fact the Crusades themselves, may 
be said to have ended with the return of Prince 
Edward from Palestine and his accession to the throne 
as Edward the First. Either the power of the Order 
of Templars had declined before he came to the 
throne, or he had as little fear or scruple with regard 
to it as he had in relation to any other assumed 
authority, for we find Prince Edward, on his return 
from Wales in 1263, going to the Temple with a 
number of armed followers, and, on the pretext of 
inspecting or removing some jewels, causing a coffer 
to be broken open, and taking away money and valu- 
ables representing £10,000, which would be equivalent 
to £80,000 or £100,000 at the present day. 

It is not recorded that any explanation was given, 
or that the royal burglar apologised, but the people 
of London were so incensed that the populace broke 
into the houses of some of the courtiers and plundered 
them. The King, who was at the Tower, soon found 
that the citizens were prepared to support the barons, 
who resented his disregard of the oaths that he had 
made at Oxford to rule in accordance with the 
Charters. 

As Edward the First gave little heed to the 



I.] 



STUDENTS AT COMMON LAW. 



11 



claims of tlie Templars, it is not surprising that the 
vacillating Edward II. should have followed the lead 
of Philippe of France, by imprisoning the chiefs and 
dissolving the order, conferring their possessions on 




THE OEiaiXAX PEIOEY CHTJECH OF ST. JOHN, CLEEKENWELL. 



his favourite, Aymer de Yalence, Earl of Pembroke. 
At the Earl's death the property of the Templars and 
the great settlement in Fleet Street were conferred on 
their predecessors and rivals, the Knights Hospitallers 
of St. John of Jerusalem, whose priory and house 
near the City were at St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, 
and whose cosfnisance, the lamb and flaof, is still to 
be seen at the Temple, along with the rival badge of 
two knights on one horse. 

The Hospitallers leased the Inner and Middle 
Temples to the students at common law, who made a 



12 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [I. 

community there, as the Serjeants-at-law had done at 
Serjeants' Inn, in what had been "New Street" till 
the latter part of the reign of Henry III., when it was 
re-named Chancellors, or Chancery, Lane. It is to be 




THE OLD "tabaed" INN. {From a sketch taken shortly before its 
demolition.) 

noted that even at that date the more important 
buildings, and some few houses, were built of brick or 
faced with stone. Some portions of the walls of the 
old buildings of the Temple, which were of brick, 
seem to have survived till a late date, for in 1666 
they stopped the fire of London from spreading 
further. Before that time Spenser, who had prob- 
ably often heard the chimes at midnight with Raleigh 
m Fleet Street, wrote — 

*' Those bricky towers 
The which on Thames' broad aged back doe ride, 
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers." 



I-] 



LEAEXEl) BROTHERS." 



13 



Serjeants' Inn, as we have seen, iiad been estab- 
lished before the Temple was appropriated to the law 
students, for in fact the Serjeants-at-law, who also 
exercised some judicial functions, took their name 
from the Freres serjens, or Fratres servient&s — 




CHAUCEE AS A PILGEIX. 

serving brethren of the Order of the Templars — 
whence comes the " learned brother " in their mode 
of addressing each other. 

The building next to Serjeants' Inn, in Chan- 
cellor's Lane, was a house which formerly belonged 

*Tlus and the succeeding illusti-ations of the " Canterhiuy Tales " are 
from the EUesmere MS. of Chaucer. 



U THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [I. 

to a Jew, from whom it was taken as a forfeit by 
Henry HI. in 1233. Whether that not very scrupu- 
lous Sovereign had some prickings of conscience about 
the transaction cannot be determined, but, perhaps in 
an access of pious zeal, or for the more ready accu- 
mulation of forfeits from other obstinate Hebrews, he 
converted the Jew's house into an asylum " for con- 
verted Jews and infidels," who were comfortably 
maintained there, and had a church built for them ; 
" whereby it came to pass," to quote the words of the 
old chronicler, " that in short time there were gathered 
a great number of converts, which were baptised, in- 
structed in the doctrine of Christ, and there lived 
under a learned Christian appointed to govern them. 
This house of the converts began to lack inhabitants 
in the next reign, for in 1290 Edward the First 
banished all the Jews, and they were driven from the 
country with such cruelty and injustice that few were 
left to be converted, and Edward the Third then con- 
verted the Jew's house into the house and office of 
William Burstall, Clarke, the first custos rotuloruni " 
(Master or Keeper of the KoUs, or records of Chan- 
cery). The house then took the name of " The 
Rolls," and the street that of Chancery Lane. The 
Church became a Chapel of the Rolls, and though it 
had been greatly altered and " adapted " on several 
occasions, some portions of the old building have been 
preserved. It is recorded by Stowe that relief and 
assistance were aftbrded to any converted Jews or 
infidels who applied at the Rolls house long after its 
transformation, and it has been cited as a remarkable 



I.J THE EARLY WOULD OF LETTERS. 15 

instance of modern progress and the mutability of 
human affairs, that in our time one of the most 
learned and distinguished Masters was Sir George 
Jessel, a member of the Jewish community. 

Speaking of Stow and ancient chroniclers reminds 
us that Fleet Street has been associated with the 
literature of the country, at all events ever since 
William Fitzstephen, before the end of the twelfth 
century, wrote his description of "the most noble 
City of London." That description was a preface 
to his " Life of Thomas a Beckett," to whom he 
was Confidential Clerk, and at whose murder he 
was present. 

It is to be remembered that in the train and 
Court of the Sovereign, and in the retinues of princes, 
barons, and noblemen, who lived in the castles and 
inns between the Tower and Westminster, and rode 
with their following up and do^vn Fleet Street, amidst 
the clank and jingle of arms and the glitter of steel 
and gold — were poets, chroniclers, minstrels, song- 
writers, romancists, and translators, who held their 
part in the world of action and authority as well as in 
the world of letters. 

For there ivas a " world of letters " — a bright and 
beautiful world of thought and high imagining, which 
expanded in scope and influence from the time when 
— a thousand years before Milton was born — the 
peasant-poet, Cyedmon, sang in the hall of Whitby 
Abbey of the Creation and Paradise Lost, till that 
later date — still before the metal type had super- 
seded the copyist's pen — when Dante, Petrarch and 



16 TEE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [I. 

Boccaccio in Italy, and Gower, Langland and 
Geoffrey Chaucer in England, moved the admiration 
of the learned, and powerfully stirred the hearts of 
the unlettered. 




THE JIAN OF LAW. 



To Chaucer especially belonged the fame of poems 
and stories through which still blows the fresh air of 
an English May. Chaucer's verse fixed and preserved 
the standard of the English language, and gave to 
successive generations pictures of early English life 
and character which have never been surpassed, and 
were only equalled by those of WiUiam Shakespeare, 
two hundred years afterwards. 

Let us stand with Chaucer and his friend John 
Gower on Fleet Bridge, where we may. also meet the 
author of " Piers Plovfman," as he comes from that 
other bridge by the water-gate of the great palace of 



I.] WITH Gil AUG EB IN FLEET STREET. 17 

Bridewell, " in old times the king's house where the 
courts were kept." Here we may catch the aspect of 
frequenters of the Highway of Letters in the latter 




THE WIFE OF BATH. 



part of the reign of Edward III., or before the abdi- 
cation of Richard II ; and may recognise some of the 
pilgrims who set out from the Tabard, in Southwark, 
to visit the shrine of a Beckett, at Canterbury. 

Even "mine host of the Tabard," fit to be a 
Marshal in a hall — merry and wise — who takes his 
seat, as mine host should, at the table with his guests, 
to entertain them with " victuals of the best " and 
generous wine, and to contribute his share of lively 
but sober conversation, is typical of the two sturdy 



18 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [I. 

men walking together across tlie street, clad in tunics 
of " cloth of ray," or striped cloth, and with beaver hats 
from Flanders, worn over their hoods or " capuchons." 

They have come h'om the Vintry, where the}^ 
have been sampling wine at a merchant's house in 
Dowgate Lane — perhaps at the house of the successor 
of Chaucer's father, who, we understand, was a vintner 
and a " boteler " (bottler), or purveyor of wine to 
Kmg Edward the Third. 

His son, the great Enghsh poet — born at that 
house in the Yintry — became one of the royal pages, 
and after following the King to the wars, was 
entrusted with important missions in France and 
in Italy, where he journeyed out of his way to visit 
" Francis Petrarch, the laureat poet, at Padua." 

It was the Oxford Clerk who told the tale related 
to him by the learned Clerk of Padua. There he is, 
on his way to Westminster, for he has come to 
London to see a friend. His threadbare coat, his 
lean, lank figure, even his horse, " lean as a rake," 
betoken the ecclesiastic without a benefice — the man 
of books and serious, simple character, who will 
"gladly learn and gladly teach," but has none of 
that self-seeking wisdom which is devoted to getting 
on in the world. 

A strange contrast to this worthy man, whose 
speech is short, quick, and highly reverential, may be 
seen in the monk who is riding yonder on a good 
horse, with gaily-ornamented bridle and housings, so 
that as he ambles along the harness jingles in the 
wind as clear as a chapel bell. His hood is fastened 



I.;i FEIAES BLACK, WHITE, AXD GREY. 19 

under his chin with a gold pin, the head of which is 
in the form of a love-knot ; the sleeves of his gown 
are edged with costly fur, and his ruddy face shines 
as thouofh it had been anointed with oil. He is a 
forward member of the hunt ; and it must be remem- 
bered that ecclesiastics do not necessarily wear 
canonical atth-e except when officiating. Here are 
two of the Chantry priests from St. Paul's coming 
this wa}^, one of whom wears a green tunic edged 
mth fnr and scarlet hose (or tight pantaloons and 
stockings in one), a girdle richly gilt, and a cap of 
beaver which covers his tonsure. His comjDanion 
wears the canonical gown and hood of scarlet. The 
friars, black, white and grey, and especially the 
mendicants, are more ecclesiastical in dress, particu- 
larly those who belong to the severer orders, which 
that sly, wanton-looking fellow 3^onder does not. 
He begs his way — that is, he hves on the hospitality 
of those whose doors are ever open to him, and at 
whose tables he eats and drinks of the best they 
have ; and whether it be venison or warden pie, 
washed down with good wine, or the humbler beef 
and ale, " lives a good life because he Hves well." 
Notice his comfortable double-worsted cope, and his 
"tippet," or long hanging sleeve, fiill of pins and 
knives, for presents to the comely women whom he 
confesses, and the girls who hsten to his honeyed 
admonitions. This is one of the friars whom Wycliife 
denounces ; and Chaucer, who holds much of the doc- 
trine of the great Reformer, and shares his opinions 
about friars, speaks less harshly of this insidious 
c 2 



20 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS, 



[I- 



rogue than we might have expected. Perhaps the 
jovial and free -living stroller, with all his vices, 
is to be preferred to the sumpnour (summoner) — 
or official accuser of those suspected of heresy 




THE SQUIEE. 



and other offences — that fiery-faced, pimpled, and 
foul-breathed creature, who takes bribes and uses 
his official authority for the worst purposes. On 
his head is a garland large enough for an ale- 
house sign, and he carries a big cake as though it 
were a buckler, for he is on a journey, and is used 
to heavy feeding and snacks between meals. By 
his side is a pardoner, or seller of dispensations. He 
has just come from Rome, and carries indulgences. 



I] THE ''M00TE8" AT 8T PAUL'S. 2] 

absolutions, and pretended relics of alleged miraculous 
efficacy. An unsavoury pair these — let them go, for, 
old as he is now, our friend Chaucer's blood is quick, 
and it is said to be on record in the case-book at the 
Temple that his dislike of friars once led him into an 
altercation with one in this neighbourhood, which 
ended in his beating his antagonist, but whether in 
argument or at fisticuffs it boots not to enquire too 
closely, though it is rumoured that the poet had to 
pay a fine. 

More worthy of notice is the doctor of physic, 
who has been to Lamb-hithe (Lambeth) to the 
bishop's library, and is credited with knowing more 
about the influence of the stars than about medicine. 
His suit of red Persian silk is lined with tafi'eta and 
"sendal," a thin silk fabric named after the river 
Indus or " Sindu " — whence it was first brought. 

The serjeant-at-law, with his scarlet gown and 
white hood, both edged with lamb-skin fur, his silken- 
striped girdle, his silken coif (the mark of his legal 
rank) tied beneath the chin, is on his way to St. 
Paul's, where he takes his stand at a pillar in the 
great portico, there to meet clients who bring their 
cases to him. Thither also go this party of law 
students from the Temple, to take part in those 
debates in which they learn to " put cases " for dis- 
cussion. These meetings are called " Boltas Mootes " 
(bolting meetings) — for by them the students learn 
to " bolt the meal from the chaff" in argument. 

Chaucer's serjeant attends the mootes, held, as we 
have said, in the portico of the Cathedral, Avhich is 



22 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [I. 

called " Paradise," tlie ancient architectural term for 
a piazza or covered walk being " Paradisus " — while 
" Parvise " is a church porch. The Oxford disputa- 
tions are " disinitationes in Parviso," and it is possible 
that Chaucer may have taken part in them, though 
we know not for certain whether he was either at 
Oxford or Cambridge Universit}^ except that he 
is a man of learning as well as a man of genius. 
His acquirements, com^mencing in one of the London 
schools founded by some wealthy trader, make him 
a citizen of the world, a master of current know- 
ledge ; and he has been soldier, traveller, courtier, 
and always a keen observer and student of human 
nature and human character. 

His bold simplicity of language, his charming 
fancy, his cheerful, healthy views of life and societ}^ 
attune his acquaintance with art and letters to a 
familiar and welcome note. His appearance, too, 
accords with his manly bearing and high attain- 
ments, for as we stand here his well-knit, though 
now somew^hat portly, figure, his fair, flowing hair, his 
keen, humorous eye and beautiful radiant face, attract 
the attention of many a passer-by. 

Is this dignified, SAveet and delicate prioress, in her 
cloak and garb of the Benedictine order, the Lady 
Eglantine of Chaucer's verse ? She is accompanied 
by her chaplain, who is a nun, and by two priests, and 
they are riding into the City either to visit the 
Minchuns (or nuns) of Minchun Lane, the Priory of 
St. Helen, Bishopsgate, or to the Abbey of St. Clare, 
in the Minories, founded by Edward of Lancaster, 



J.] KNIGHT, SQUIRE, AND YEOMAN. 23 

Leicester and Derby, brother of the King (Edward the 
Third). 

The " very perfect gentle knight/' who has done 
deeds of high valour and chivalry in the foreign wars, 
and yet is " meek as a maid/' and speaks evil to none, 
reins in his horse that the prioress and her attendants 
may precede him. His fustian cassock is somewhat 
soiled by contact with his suit of mail, for he has just 
come home from foreign service. His garb, in its 
simplicity, contrasts strangely with the more fashion- 
able attire of the gallant young squire, his son, whose 
short, tight-fitting jacket, or " cote-hardie/' with loose 
hanging sleeves, is embroidered with flowers red and 
white, so that it resembles a meadow in spring. The 
youth wears his hair long, and carefully pressed into 
accurate curls, and he possesses many accomplish- 
ments — can dance, make songs and sing them, play 
the flute, and probably the gittern, or guitar, also. 
He is as active as a deer, but, better than all, he is as 
respectfully attentive to his father as their retainer 
the yeoman is — that yeoman with the "nut-head" and 
forester's green hood and jerkin, the badge of St. 
Christopher on his breast, a horn by his side, and 
his bow and peacock-plumed arrows ready for use. 

This young squire's dress is not of the extreme 
fashion, which is so extravagant that the Commons 
have petitioned that the lower classes and those of 
moderate means shall be restrained from aping their 
betters. There is, however, a glow of brilliant colour 
and a sheen of sarcenet (Saracen silk), cloth of gold, 
jewelled caps, belts, sword hilts and bedizened bridles 



24 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [I. 

and housings for the horses, when a Royal procession 
or a company of knights and barons go to the joustings 
at Smithfield, or to witness a mystery play performed 
by the parish clerks at the well which has been named 
after them — Clerkenwell — or at Skinner's Well. 

The gallants who are standing talking together 
near the "frippery," or mercer's and tailor's shop 
yonder, are gorgeous popinjays. The coats are made 
of blue or white cloth, with a long nap, or pile, which, 
when it gets a little shabby, can be shorn, so that it 
may look fresh and new again. This garment buttons 
as low as the hips, and the loose sleeves, reaching 
to the elbow, fall thence, almost trailing on the ground, 
in open " tippets," the edges of which are strangely 
pinked and scalloped. Below the elbows the sleeves 
of the linen doublet button to the wrists, where they 
meet the finely-purfled and embroidered gloves, of 
dressed sheepskin. The thin, tight-fitting hose is 
in parti-coloured stripes, or each leg is of different 
colour. The pointed shoes, of soft Cordovan leather, 
are slit in an open pattern on the upper part of the 
feet. Some of them have points of inordinate length, 
the toes reaching upward towards the knee. These 
are called " Cracowes," and were introduced by the Bo- 
hemian students from Cracow, who came here to study 
at the Universities, and some of whom have carried 
home the tenets and opinions of Wycliff'e, which have 
been taken up by leaders of a reformation of religion 
in Germany and Switzerland. The coverings for the 
head are Flanders caps and feathers, or hoods buttoned 
to the chin and furnished at the crown with long tails 



I. J CONTRASTS IN COSTUME AND COLOUR. 25 

(liripipes), which, are wrapped round the head above 
the ears. A cloak, embroidered with silk and silver 
thread, and large enough to cover the wearer, is 




THE MILLER. 



gathered on the left shoulder, where it buttons to the 
cote-hardie like a cape ; or a silken-hooded cloak 
(paletoque) falls in more voluminous folds. A silken 
girdle, or a belt with golden buckle, holds the gypcerie, 
or pouch, in which is a knife used for cutting the 
food at table. 

Note the contrast of the plain coat and hood of 
the bullet-headed miller, famous in fight and fair, 
who comes jogging along with broadsword and bag- 



'26 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [I. 

pipe under his arm. Note also the difference 
between the buxom self-indulgent wife of Bath and 
the ladies to whom these noble youths bow to the 
ground, and who wear embroidered cote-hardies, or 
jackets of fine cloth, kirtles of sendal, and rich tunics 
trimmed with grey fur. Some of them seem to prefer 
a sleeveless jacket in place of the cote-hardie. Their 
skirts are extended by dress-improvers made of foxes' 
tails ; their girdles are of gold tissue, their gypceries 
of decorated leather ; the head-dress is either the 
capiichon or a round cap of velvet. The hair of most 
of them is either naturally of yellow hue or is dyed 
to that colour with saffron, and is gathered under a 
net of gold wire. 

The feminine head-gear is so changeful, however, 
that an extinguisher-shaped peak, slanting back from 
the crown of the head and furnished with streamers, 
is coming into fashion, while some great ladies wear a 
tiara, shaped like a new moon, with the horns up- 
ward, or a kind of coronet with a circular lappet 
stiffly distended from each temple. 

Much simpler is the appearance of the serving- 
woman standing at the door of a house yonder, with 
stout laced shoes, ample " barm-cloth," or apron, and 
a cap of linen, frilled or pleated so that it stands 
out round the head. The labourer, or rustic, who is 
speaking to her, as he leans with his arm across the 
neck of the horse that he is leading, is coarsely 
clothed in fustian coat and rough woollen hose. At 
home he wears a " bliaus " (blouse) of blue, and wears 
a rough cap, or " hure," upon his head. The grave and 



I.J CITIZENS AND CRAFTSMEN. 27 

dignified franklin, or freeholder, a friend of Chaucer 
and a sheriff in his own county, has come to London 
on law business, and rides along slowly, his fresh 
face and beard "white as a daisy," his red coat 
lined with blue, and ornamented with stripes of lace 
or fringe. Of him it is said that — 

" Withouten baked meat never was his house ; 
Of fish and flesh, and that so plenteous. 

It snowed in his house of meat and drink." 

The merchant who is coming this way from East 
Chepe wears a surcoat figured with red and blue 
flowers, and an imposing Flanders beaver on his 
head and handsomely-clasped boots on his feet. 
He stops to speak to an acquaintance, a wealthy 
citizen, and member of the great guild of "Pep- 
perers," or Grocers, who appears in coat and surcoat 
of gorgeous hue and a furred gown, bearing on its 
front a camel, the emblem of his company. 

He will ask the merchant to dinner to-morrow, 
and these City magnates know how to dine, though 
the recent restrictions exclude more than a certain 
number of dishes and forbid extravagance in venison. 
The annalists, from Fitzstephen downwards, who 
have walked in this Highway of Letters, have de- 
clared the pests of London to be the " immoderate 
drinking of fools and the frequency of fires " ; but 
the grave and hospitable governors of the City 
Companies have some discretion, and the " Pep- 
perers" know the quality of their wine. 

We may see with what distinction Craftsmen oi 
the Guilds appear, by the group of men now coming 



28 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [I. 

out of Shoe Lane on their Avay from Holbome 
Bridge. They are all clad in the varied livery of 
their guilds, and make a brave show. Their knives 
have handles of wrought silver, and they wear the 
ornaments or emblems of then- companies. Our poet 

admires them as men 
fit to sit in high hall 
and likely to become 
aldermen, and tells us 
that each of their wives 
expects to be addressed 
as " Madam " ; for they 
are wealthy men, and 
can hold their own at 
board or council. 

The laws restraining 
gluttony limit servants 
and the " lower orders " to plain eating, and to what 
are regarded as moderate potations of new ale, rather 
grouty in quahty, particularly sweet, and, as one of 
the lacqueys in the King's Court complains, often 
tasting of the droppings of the candles that fall into 
the wooden biggins or metal flagons. 

Country gentlemen, like the fi-anklins, regard a 
certain rude plenty as indispensable, and the variety 
of plain dishes are for hearty eaters: but here in 
Fleet Street, where " mine host " of the Horn or 
the Falcon caters for distinguished visitors, there is 
a cuisine borrowed from the French. Our dinner 
hour is ten o'clock, so that we are ready for a third 
meal, which Ave call supper, in the evening, and for 




THE FEIAE. 



I.] DIJSfNEB IN GHAUGEWS TIME. 29 

our "liveries," or snacks, before going to bed; said 
snacks consisting of a good allowance of bread, a 
slice or two of meat, and a large draught of wine. 
If we dine in company — at a large table, Avhere the 
salt-cellar in the middle is the chief ornament — our 
wooden or metal platters will be kept going for an 
hour or two, our silver spoons and metal forks will 
make no small clatter; and though it is the fashion 
to have the beef and mutton served in " gobbets," or 
small pieces, and most of our other viands are in 
the nature of spoon-meat, yet for those plain eaters 
who prefer them there are joints of beef, pork, mutton, 
or venison, chines of bacon and collars of brawn ; but 
these are mostly little more than adjuncts to give 
dignity to the feast. 

Most of us prefer to begin with pottage, called 
bukkenade, which is veal, fowl or rabbit, shred fine, 
and stewed with sugar, almonds, currants, ginger and 
cinnamon. If this is too much for us, there is ''furmety," 
boiled wheat beaten with yolks of eggs in broth or 
milk. There are so many fast-days that fish is not 
much eaten at feasts, but there is a good dish of it for 
Fridays, consisting of turbot, tench, eels, pike and 
others, minced small, stewed, and mixed with spice, 
pepper, vinegar and wine. Plain eaters may try 
slices of porpoise brayed with almonds, but it is 
rather a strong and rich dish. 

Chaucer says that a good judge of brewing prefers 
London ale to any other, but at dinner we have 
wine from Gascony or the Ehine ; or if we like it 
sweet, there are those called " bastard " wines, and 



30 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [I. 

known as Claire and Vernage. We have no more 
taste for old wine than for old ale, and the newer it 
is the more we drink of it. 

The next course is of " mortrewes " and '' blanc 
desires." The former is named after the mortress, or 
mortar, in which the ingredients are brayed with a 
pestle. They consist of chickens, pork, bread and eggs, 
beaten to a pulp, and well spiced and seasoned with 
herbs, and sometimes with fruits. These mortrewes 
are mostly coloured j^ellow, red or black, with saifron, 
sandal-wood or burnt blood, while the blanc-desire 
of the bra^vTi, or flesh of capons, pounded with almonds 
and rice flour or fine wheaten flour, is pure white, and 
is regarded as a marvellously nourishing dish. 

For another course there are fillets of venison, 
partridges parboiled, and then larded, roasted and 
sprinkled with ginger. A course of " egrets," or 
young herons, is esteemed ; and we have Avild duck, 
roast goose, and even cygnet, besides dishes of game, 
if the dinner be one of state; vegetables (served 
separately) are pease minced with onions, vinegar, salt 
and saffron ; our " salats " are parsley, cress, rosemary, 
rue, mint and fennel, with salt, oil and vinegar. The 
sweets are custards of fla^vn, or a mixture of cream, 
butter, and eggs, ground up with apples, currants, 
white bread and spices, cooked in a " cofiin," or crust 
of paste. " Spinee " is a mixture of pounded almonds, 
rice and milk, flavoured with the hawthorn flower, 
which gives it its name, while " Rosee " is a similar 
compound, with the savour of white roses. 

If the dinner is a special one, the cook will have 



I.] GHAUGEWS PATRONS. 31 

sent up a " subtlety," or ingenious design, represent- 
ing some historical or mythical scene or event, and 
made of pastry and confectionery, but otherwise we 
must be contented to pass on to " fritures," or fritters 
of figs, ground with spices, covered with a thin crust 
of paste, and fried in honey. Tarte de Brie is made 
of cheese from Brie, eggs, sugar and spice. " Macrowes " 
consists of Italian maccaroni with grated cheese, and 
with these we finish the repast ; after which a bumper 
of spiced wine, called Hippocras, will settle our 
digestion. 

Chaucer was often at royal feasts and sat at great 
men's tables, for he was a trusted companion of John 
of Gaunt, the great Duke of Lancaster, and of Lionel, 
Duke of Clarence. The poet was a prisoner in France 
in the early days when he fought at the siege of Bet- 
ters, and was captured by the enemy ; and at a later 
date, in England, he was arrested and sent to the Tower 
for having taken part against the Court in those civil 
and religious troubles which, rightly or wrongly, were 
associated Avith the supporters of the doctrines of 
Wyclifte. It was with much difficulty, and the loss of 
some of those pensions and public appointments 
which had been granted to him for his services, and 
to enable him to devote his later days to the advance- 
ment of learning, that he was released from prison. His 
own complaint of his humiliation, in his prose work, 
'' The Testament of Love," is powerful and affecting 
enough to show how much he suffered ; but a man 
who had been the friend of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, 
and was stiU the friend of John, the great Duke of 



32 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [I. 

Lancaster, and of his young son, Harry of Bolingbroke, 
was not likely to be kept long in durance. 

But when he was released he was comparatively 
poor. He had previously been deprived of his office 
of Comptroller of the Customs of Wine and Wool in 
the Port of London, part of the payment for which 
had been a pitcher of wine daily from the King's 
table, a gift which had been commuted for its value 
in money. He was now deprived of other offices and 
pensions, so that, till a portion of the latter were 
restored to him by the King's favour, he was in sorry 
plight, especially while his wealthy protector was 
away from England. 

When his early friend and patron, John of Gaunt, 
married Blanche, the heiress of Lancaster, Chaucer 
commemorated the event in his poem of " The 
Dream." He himself married Philippa Pyckard, or 
de Rouet, daughter of a knight of Hainault. She was 
a maid of honour to the Queen of Edward III., after 
whom she had been named. Her sister was Catherine 
Swynford, widow of Sir John Swynford. The re- 
lations of the Duke with Catherine Swynford had 
been too intimate before the death of his second wife, 
Constance of Castile, and after that event she became 
his third wife, and her children were legitimised. 

As a lad of fifteen Chaucer had seen one of the 
bravest spectacles ever witnessed in Fleet Street, 
when the Black Prince brought his prisoners, the 
French King John and the young Prince Philip, to 
England, after the victory at Poitiers. The exquisite 
courtesy of Prince Edward, who rode upon a palfrey 



I.] GUESTS, NOT CAPTIVES. 33 

while his captives were mounted on chargers and 
carried their arms, made it a procession of honour for 
the noble foe, even among the multitude Avho wit- 
nessed their reception by Edward, not as prisoners 




THE PARDONEE. 



but as guests, at the sumptuous palace of the Savoy 
in the Strand, which became the property of the 
Duke of Lancaster. 

It was in the army led by King Edward to France 
for enforcing the payment of the ransom promised 
for the liberation of John, the captive guest, that 
Chaucer first bore arms. He was then a youth of 
seventeen, and he continued to serve in the wars for 
twenty-seven years. 

It is possible that he was in foreign service with 
Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the third son of Edward, 



34 THE EIGSWAY OF LETTERS. [l. 

and elder brother of Lancaster. This prince, who 
married a daughter of the Duke of Milan, died in 
Piedmont in 1368, and it was he who, when he was in 
London, kept state at Baynard's Castle on Thames 
Bank, near the house of the Black Friars, and be- 
tAveen BrideAvell and the precinct of the King's Ward- 
robe. This castle had taken its name from Baynard, 
one of the barons who came to England with Duke 
AA^illiam of Normand}' ; but in the reign of John it 
had 23assed into the hands of Fitzwalter, one of the 
descendants of the gTeat family of the Earls of Clare. 
He was custodian and banner-bearer to the City of 
London, and one of the most prominent of the barons 
Avho, in the name of the City, insisted on the King's 
acceptance of the Great Charter. 

iS^ot far from Bajraard's Castle, and the site of the 
former castle of Montfichet, the church and house of 
the Dominican or Black Friars had long been estab- 
lished, and their house was of so much importance 
that parhaments were often held there. This order 
of " preaching friars " seems to have included the 
more literate of the monastic body, and their superior 
influence lasted until the suppression of the monas- 
teries, so that Ave find the Emperor Charles the Fifth 
lodging in their house beyond Ludgate, Avhen he came 
on a visit to Henry the Eighth in 1522. ScAxn years 
afterAvards, in the great hall of the same building, Avas 
held the so-called trial by Avhich Henry sought to 
establish his claun to a diA'orce from Queen Catharine. 

The prison for debtors, and for heretics or " Lol- 
lards," as the folloAvers of Wychfie Avere called, A\^as at 



I.J VTYCLIFFE AXD JOHX OF GAVyF 35 

Ludgate, close to the little church of St. Gregory, a 
parish chiirch standing, as was said, in the elbow of 
St. Paul : and the Black Friars took a prominent 
part in those accusations which led to the summon- 
ing of AVvr- 11 ftp, at the instance of Pope Gre,2"ory, 
to attend at the Cathedral to answer for his heresy 
before the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop 
of London. 

The accoimt of the scene at the Cathedral has 
been preserved in Fox's •'■' Acts and Monimients/' and 
shows with what entire disregard of the authority 
of the Pope and the bishops the Duke took up the 
cause of the Reformers, whose views he seems to 
have openly defended. 

Wycliffe went to the Cathedral, accompanied not 
only by John of Gaunt, but by Lord Percy, Marshal 
of Enoiand. These two noblemen must have been 
demonstrative, for at the commencement of the pro- 
ceedings the Bishop of London said, '"If I could 
have guessed. Lord Percy, that you would have 
played the master here, I woidd have prevented you 
coming.'"' This was an imphed thi-eat, to which the 
proud Duke of Lancaster rephed, '•' Yes. he shall play 
the master here for all you." And Lord Percy there- 
upon tiuTied to Wychfie, and said, -Wychj&e, sit 
down ! You have need of a seat, for you have many 
thincrs to sav." 

" It is imreasonable," retorted the Bishop, " that 
a clergyman cited before his ordinary should sit 
during his answer. He shall stand ! '' 

• My Lord Percy, you are in the right," cried the 



36 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [I. 

Duke ; and then, turning to the Bishop, " And for 
you, my Lord Bishop, joii are grown so proud and 
arrogant, I will take care to humble your pride ; and 
not only yours, my Lord, but that of all the prelates 
in England. Thou dependest upon the credit of 
thy relations, but so far from being able to help 
thee, they shall have enough to do to support them- 
selves." 

"I place no confidence in my relations," retorted 
the Bishop, " but in God alone, who will give me the 
boldness to speak the truth." 

The Duke of Lancaster here turned, and said in 
a half- whisper to Lord Percy, " Bather than take this 
at the Bishop's hands, I will drag him by the hair 
of his head out of the Court." 

This was a pretty quarrel as it stood, and it was 
not discreet cf John of Gaunt to threaten Bishop 
Courtenay ; for, though his relations may not have 
been able to aid him, the citizens of London were. 
It was soon afterwards said that the people of the 
City were mostly Lollards, but they had grave sus- 
picions that Lancaster was aiming at the throne. 
The Black Prince, who had been the people's idol, was 
dead, the old warrior king had grown feeble, and was 
never happy Avhile he was out of the company of 
Alice Perrers, the beautiful and designing woman 
who had been a maid of honour to the late Queen 
Philippa ; and it was suspected that John of Gaunt 
was planning to jDrevent the accession of young 
Richard, the son of the Black Prince. 

This and the arrogance of Lancaster were 



L] EIOTERS IX FLEET STREET. 37 

probably the chief reasons for the indignation expressed 
by the Londoners at the treatment of their bishop. 
They may have liked AVycliffe much, but they hated 
Lancaster more, and an opportunity soon occurred 
which enabled them to manifest their resentment 
against Lord Percy and the Duke. The former, 
as Lord Marshal, had illegally, and in defiance of 
privilege, caused a popular citizen, one John de la 
Mere, to be arrested and imprisoned in the Marshal- 
sea ; whereupon a number of riotous Londoners went 
to the Marshal's house, and, not finding him there, 
partly pulled do^m the building. Remembering that 
they also had a score to settle with the Duke of 
Lancaster, the Lord Marshal's friend, they returned 
across the river, and hurried along Fleet Street to 
the Duke's palace of the Savoy, in which they fancied 
that the Marshal had taken refuge. Here they de- 
manded that he should be given up ; and an unfor- 
tunate priest coming out to remonstrate with them, 
and indiscreetly saying that the man who had been 
imprisoned was a traitor, the mob declared that 
the priest was the Lord Marshal in disguise, and 
summarily knocked him on the head and killed 
him. 

A report of the violence of the rioters reached 
the Bishop of London, who went forth with his 
attendants, and by earnest entreaty and persuasion 
induced the mob to refrain from further depreda- 
tions ; but they had been ready for any mischief, and 
probably were glad of an excuse to attack the Duke of 
Lancaster. They had already begun to demolish his 



38 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [I. 

palace of the Savoy, to make havoc of its fine rooms, 
its costly library, and stately furniture, the Duke 
himself being out dining in the City. They gained 
little by their violence, however, though the riot 
was so alarming that an insurrection was feared, and 
the commotion reached to the very doors of Par- 
liament. One of the last audiences given by the 
great Edward III. was at his palace at Shene, to the 
Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London, 
who were persuaded by the Princess of Wales, widow 
of the Black Prince, to submit themselves to the 
Duke, and to crave pardon for their grievous offence. 
The citizens were enjoined to choose another mayor 
and aldermen; but the opposition to the Duke of 
Lancaster continued to be manifested. On the death 
of Edward, a deputation of the wealthiest and most 
powerful of the City magnates rode over to the old 
royal palace at Kennington to visit the widow of 
the late Prince of Wales and her son Richard, who 
resided there. 

The boy was not yet eleven years old, and his 
personal beauty was the boast of the Londoners, who 
were ready to worship him because of the memory 
of his father. John of Gaunt, therefore, who was 
rightly or ^^Tongly supposed to be ready to su]3plant 
him, was more unpopular than ever, and neither he 
nor any of his brothers (the late king's sons) were 
made regents, or placed by the barons among the 
twelve permanent councillors. 

The Duke took matters calmly enough, and 
retired to his castle at Kenilworth, and then, as 



I. J PIRACY AS A DIVERSION. 39 

titular King of Castile, got together a fleet and 
did a little piracy and filibustering on the English 
coast. But we are drifting more than a cable's 
length from the Highway of Letters, the fashionable 
resort at the western end of the City. 




LYDGATE CO>'TEirPLATIXG THE WHEEL OF FOETTXNT:. {From 

Fymois edition of '' The Fall of Frinces,'' 1513.) 



CHAPTER 11. 



vox CLAMAXTIS IX FLEET STREET. 

The StraQd — Char-Ing Cross — "Wy elite's ^"ritings — The Translation 
of the Bible — Effect on Letters— "Vox Clamantis " — Langland 
— " Piers Plowman" — Papal Authority — Wat Tyler — Insurgents 
in Fleet Street — AYreck of the Temple Buildings — Euin of the 
Savoy — The "Moral Gower" — The "Philosophical Strode" — 
Gower and the Young King — ''Confessio Amantis " — Henry of 
Lancaster — Gibbet and Stake in Fleet Street — St. Dunstan's — 
AYhite Friars — Conduits — Fewter Lane — John Lydgate — Eevival 
of English Literature— Occleve — Pecock — Humphrey, Duke of 
Gloucester — Outdoor Sports — Football in Fleet Street — Shire 
Lane — The Maypole near Temple Bar — " London Lyckpenny " 
— John Harding — Thomas Fabyan — John Shirley. 

Beyoxd the Temple were tlie palace of the Savoy and 
mansions, which stood on the north bank or strand ol 
the Thames, their fronts to the river, and their plea- 
sant gardens leading to the water gates and landing 
stages, where state barges and galleys, with gilt and 



II.] ALONG FLEET STREET TO GHAB-ING. 41 

carven proAvs and gorgeous canopies, waited for the 
rowers to convey bishops and nobles along the silent 
highway to Westminster, Lambhithe, Bridewell, 
Belinsgate, or the Tower. On the north side of 
the Strand, beyond Temple Bar, nearly all was open 
country when Edward the First set up the cross 
to mark the last spot at which the body of his 
beloved Queen, Eleanor, rested on the funeral journey 
from Waltham Abbey to Westminster. The place 
then named Charing was not even a village, but a 
meadow. Char-Ing means Char Meadow, and the 
name remained when it became a small village in 
the midst of open fields. Perhaps it was a field or 
meadow in which wood was burnt in pits to convert 
it into char-coal for fuel. It is certainly not derived 
from " C%eTe Reine," as some romancists would have 
us believe, for it was named Char-Ing at an earlier 
period than that of the death of Eleanor. 

What an interesting train must have passed along 
Fleet Street on that slow sad journey ! There was no 
regular causeway, no road divided from the foot-way 
in Fleet Street, except, perhaps, by a few rough wooden 
posts. In the Strand the horse-road was worse than 
any now to be seen in England, nor was there 
any great improvement made for many years after- 
wards. 

Fleet Street and its vicinity had shown credentials 
for being called " the Highway of Letters " before 
AYycliffe and his companions disappeared from the 
scene. The great reformer had begun to write pamph- 
lets, commentaries, and tracts, in EngHsh instead of 



42 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [II. 

in Latin ; and their number was considerable. They 
found their way into the Temple and other inns of 
law, and were read, not only by students, but by 
numbers of laymen, who were awakening to that cry 
for amendment in the Church and in the Court to 
which Gower was soon to give amazing strength and 
emphasis in his " Vox Glaonantis " (Voice of One Cry- 
ing), and to which Langland had before given fearless 
and unmistakable expression in his allegorical poem of 
"Piers Plowman." But the great event of the time 
was the completion of the translation of the Bible into 
English by Wycliffe and the men of piety and learning 
who were his co-workers. 

In 1360 there was no part of the Scriptures in the 
language of the people except the Psalter and some 
misleading paraphrases or metrical books. Now, by 
beginning with the Gospels, consecutive portions of 
the Sacred Word began to appear, translated with 
studious labour and research by the Reformer and his 
companions, until, in 1380, the work was accom- 
plished, and (including the Apocryphal books) the 
whole body of Scripture was open to those of the 
laity who could read it in their o^vn language. 

The citation of the reformer to appear at St. Paul's 
Cathedral was followed in 1382 by his banishment 
from the University, for he had boldly called in 
question those doctrines which the Black Friars 
regarded as tests of orthodoxy. His followers, too, were 
attacked, and many of them were sent to Lambeth 
Palace, and there immured in the chamber still known 
as the " Lollards' Prison." Two years later Wycliffe 



n.: vox CLAMANTIS. 43 

was simimoned to appear before tlie Pope himself. It 
is doubtful whether he would have obeyed the 
summons, for the legal authority of the Pope even to 
issue such a command had been denied long before, 
and his power to enforce it would never have been 
admitted, especially as there were two Popes, a schism 
in the Church having caused the recognition of a 
French as well as an Itahan Papacy. But Wychffe's 
labour was done, and he was passing to his rest. 
He had given to his countiymen a Bible in their 
own language, invaluable for their instruction in the 
articles of Chiistian faith, and of imdoubted benefit 
as a standard of scholarlv but cuiTent English. Bv 
the end of the year the great EefoiTaer, who was 
suffering from paralysis, passed to the land of peace. 

Before Gower wrote his famous poem, the Vox. 
Clanumtis had been raised in wild and startling tones 
by the followers of Wat Tyler, a fierce insurgent 
multitude, pomiag along the Highway of Letters to 
the grand and extensive buildings of the Temple, 
and thence to the superb palace of the Savoy. 
Whether Chaucer saw the entrv of the insin-Q^ents to 
Fleet Street is not known. That Gower may have 
seen it is probable, for he was, perhaps, hving at that 
time in Southwark, at the Priory of St. Mary 
Oveiy, to the rebuilding of which he gave consider- 
able sums of money. He may have heard the tramp of 
the vast army of peasants marching to London Bridge, 
from Essex, K^nt, and Stissex, to represent, as they 
declared, "the Commons of England.'"' The hundred 
thousand men encamped on Blackheath on the 11th 



44 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [II. 

of June, 1381, under the leadership of Wat Tyler of 
Dartford, John Ball of Maidstone, and Jack Straw of 

Brentwood, were not a 
horde of robbers, miu'- 
derers and scoundrels, 
thouo'h a oreat number 
of them were viUains 
— for the word viUain 
meant an agTicultural 
slave or serf bound to 
the soil which he tilled, 
and liable to be sold 
or transferred with it 
to the next proprietor 
who might come into 
possession. 

AVe have aU heard 




^^3 tl 



the story of the flight 
to London of the Kino-'s 



OLD CHAETSG cEoss. mother — once the Fair 

Maid of Kent — and of the insurgents suffering her and 
her ladies to pass their camp after taking toU in the 
shape of a few Idsses. She safely reached the Tower, 
and thence took refuge in the King's Wardrobe, near 
Bapiard's Castle. The history of those days of terror 
and bloodshed needs not to be repeated. The not 
unreasonable demands which formed the substance 
of the claim preferred by the insurgents ; the slaving 
of Wat Tyler in Smithfield ; the promise of the 
young King, and his treacherous breach of his royal 
word ; the T^Teck of the Temple buildings ; the 



ni 



SACK OF THE SAVOY. 



45 



destruction of the priceless books and documents m 
its library ; the finioiis sacking of the Savoy ; the 
burning of the manuscripts and treasures collected 
there: the breaking and pulverising of rich plate 
and jewels : the insiugents'" stem sentence of death 
on any who shotild be found stealing or appropriating 
even the most trifling article of value : the exectition 
of one at least who disobeyed this command ; the 
breach of it with regard to the potent wine foimd 
in the cellars : the transformation of the instir- 
o^ents into rioters, readv to wreak venofeance indis- 
criminately : the return to the City ; the rush to 
the wine-cellars,, left open by traders and vintners 
to propitiate the drunken crowd, who dragged the 
foreign traders fi'om theh shops and hung them 
beneath their own 
siens — these events 
need only indicate 
the Highway of 
Letters strewed 
with the chaiTed 
remnants of in- 
valuable records, 
and costly repro- 
ductions of the best 
writings of poets. 
philosophers, his- 
torians, travellei*s, 
lawyers and di- 
vines ; the water 
in the conduits or 




-^VTCLUTZ. [From Bali's '' CcKturiii of 



British Writers ," 151 



S.^ 



46 TEE HIGSWAY OF LETTERS. [II. 

leaden cisterns tinged with blood ; tlie earth 
trodden into deep holes by the trampling feet 
and mad strife of reeling men — all this Chaucer 
and Gower may have looked upon ; and Gower may 
have seen the ending of the tragedy — the bodies of 
men to whom pardon had been promised swinging 
from gibbets in streets and on river-bank and country- 
side. 

His country house was in Kent, and he also had 
some landed estate in Essex. He was, therefore, in 
the vicinity of the first rising under AYat Tyler, and it 
is probable that in the quietude of his country 
home there, he was visited, sleeping or waking, 
by the dream which, after the outbreak of the 
people and its terrors, took the form of the " Vox 
Glaonantis." 

The horrors of the plague followed the horrors 
that resulted from the insurrection, and for a time 
there was but a giooni}- and terror-stricken aspect of 
society in London. Fleet Street was silent ; the great 
palace of the Savoy was a heap of ruins, and lay 
neglected and unappropriated for more than a 
hundred years, when Henry YII. appomted the site 
for an endowed hospital, dedicated to John 
the Baptist, and for the relief of a hundred poor 
persons. 

The condition of the country was so much like 
that attending civil war that there was little en- 
couragement to literature, but during that doleful 
time the regard for each other of the two great poets, 
Chaucer and Gower, suffered no diminution. It had 



II.] GOWEB AND STRODE. 47 

survived differences of opinion, as well it might, 
since botli in their literary relations were actuated 
by the same motives — the advance of learning, the 
promotion of truth, and the improvement of 
society. 

About twenty years earlier, Chaucer had dedicated 
his " Troilits and Cressida" to ''The Moral Gower," 
evidently recognising the serious goodness as well as 
the genius of his friend. 

" Moral Gower, this book I direct 

To thee, and to the philosophical Strode, 
To vouchsafe there need is to correct 
Of your benignities and zeale's good." 

Whether Gower felt complimented by being 
bracketed with the " philosophical Strode " there are 
no means of knowing. Ralph Strode was a learned 
Dominican of Jedburgh Abbey, who had travelled in 
Europe and visited Palestine. He had a high repu- 
tation for philosophy, and he wrote verse, but neither 
his philosophy nor his verse has survived in England. 
The Dominicans were, no doubt, the most highly 
educated ecclesiastics of the time, and it has been 
thought that Strode was for a time tutor to one of 
Chaucer's sons. There can be no doubt that the 
friendship of the two poets continued till the death of 
Chaucer at the house which he occupied near St. 
Mary's chapel, at Westminster, on the site of the present 
chapel of Henry YII. They continued to be the 
chief representatives of English literature during that 
period. Both had the personal recognition of 



48 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS . 



[II 



Richard II., for they received substantial acknowledg- 
ment from him, though Gower, who needed help least, 
received a recognition more in accordance with his 
position and character than mere money gifts would 
have represented. He was appointed to the rectory 
of Braxted in Essex, in the neighbourhood of some 




THE LOLLAEDS' PRISON, LAMBETH PALACE {p. 42). {From AUoth 

' ' History of Lambeth . " ) 



property which he owned in another parish. He was 
appointed rector, not as a priest, for he was not 
ordained, but as a clerk ; and as a clerk he retired in 
his old age to a lodging in the priory of St. Mary 
Overy, to which he had been a generous patron, and 
in which he died, surviving Chaucer by some years, 
as may be seen by the dates on the tomb of the 
former in St. Saviour's Church, and that of the latter 



II] THE POET AND THE KING. 49 

in Westminster Abbey. When he retired to the 
Priory, Gower took to himself a wife — wife and 
nurse, for he became bhnd, and calmly lived out 
his days in a peaceful seclusion. He had gathered 




JOHN GOWEE. 



strength and raised fire to write his "Tripartite 
Chronicle," the Latin poem which told of the fulfil- 
ment of the warning that he had uttered in the 
" Vox Glamantis." After his death his brethren 
piously honoured his memory. The light from a 
painted window above his tomb fell on the effigy 
of the poet, and on the collar and badge of the 
Swan which had been conferred on him by the 



50 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTETtS. \1\. 

King, of wlioiii so much was hoped by those 
who looked with eager eyes for the coming of 
more intellectual Hght and of civil and religious 
liberty. 

It was in 1393 that his Majesty, making an 
excursion from the Tower in the royal barge, met 
Gower on the silent highway of the river. The poet, 
who had been for some time ill, was on his way to 
London in his boat — probably coming from Gravesend 
or Greenwich — and in response to the royal request, 
went on board the barge to speak to Eichard. After 
some conversation the young King asked the poet to 
write him a book for himself to read. This request 
was the immediate cause of the " Confessio A ^mantis " 
(Confession of a Lover,) a poem in which the 
author, old and infirm, abates nothing either of his 
literary or moral strength, though the title of the 
poem might indicate something of the style of 
Boccaccio ; and Gower says it is meant to be 

" Wisdom to the wise, 
And play to them that list to play." 

It is in reality a loyal exhortation to the King, no less 
than an appeal to the better nature of all who read 
it. To the King it was dedicated, but Richard having 
disappointed all who had begun to hope for a lasting 
reformation in his character, the poet substituted for 
his royal dedication : " What shall befal hereafter 
God wot ! " and inscribed the book to Henry of 
Lancaster. 

What did befall was that Henry took the throne 



II.] THE SMITHFIELD FIRES. 51 

as Hemy TV., and wliile Go^ver retired, as we liave 
seen, to the Priory near the bridge foot ui South- 
wark, Chaucer, who was writing the " Canterbury 
Tales," went to live at a house in Westminster, 
where he died before his last work was finished. He 
was poor then, and may very well have hoped 
that the son of his late great fiiend and patron, 
the Sovereign, who in childhood was doubtless 
often the companion and playfellow of the young 
soldier, poet, and courtier, would deal generously 
with him. Xor was his expectation altogether 
frustrated. Three days after Henry w^as proclaimed 
King, Chaucer received a j)ension of forty marks a 
year, which, with his former pension, made what 
would now be equal to about £600. But he hved 
only a year to enjoy this bounty. 

There had been little or no persecution for re- 
ligion in England, and martyrdom for heresy had 
scarcely been known under the old laws, perhaps 
because heterodoxy was unallied with power or in- 
fluence. Henry himself, like his predecessors, might 
have regarded alleged heresy with no great abhor- 
rence, unless it was made a pretext for sedition and 
conspiracy against the crown or the realm, but he 
assented to the passing of enactments which, be- 
ginning with the burning of the conscientious AYiUiam 
Sawtre, at Smithfield, lighted those fires the stench 
and smoke of which may be said to have drifted over 
the Highway of Letters for above two hundred 
years. 

He had been but fifteen months on the throne 
E 2 



52 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [II. 

when the clergy urged that a new law should be 
passed for the punishment of heresy, and the House 
of Commons joined in a petition to the King to 
repress with the utmost severity the teachers of the 
new doctrines, who " exercised schools, made and 
wrote books, and wickedly instructed and informed 
the people." 

The statute against heresy was passed, and its 
deadly enactment was that anyone convicted, re- 
fusing to abjure, or relapsing after abjuration, should 
be "made over to the sheriff of the county, or the 
mayor and bailiffs of the nearest town ; and they the 
same persons, or every of them, after such sentence 
promulgate, shall receive, and them before the people 
on an high place do be burned, that such pun- 
ishment may strike in fear to the minds of others, 
whereby no such wicked doctrine, and heretical and 
erroneous opinions, nor their authors and fautors in 
the said realm and dominions, against the Catholic 
faith, Christian law, and determination of the holy 
Church, which God prohibit, be restrained, or in any 
wise suffered." 

The Commons seem to have been as much in 
favour of suppressing what the Church called heresy 
as the clergy and nobility were ; but three years after- 
wards we find the Parliament which met at Coventry 
proposing to the King to take the revenues of the 
Church to provide money for the war against the 
Welsh, led by Owen Glendower. This was called 
(by the clergy probably) the lack-learning Parliament, 
but it seems likely that the spread of learning had 



TI] TEE SPBEAD OF ENGLISH LETTERS. 53 



begun — that the later poems of Chaucer, the " Vision" 

of Langland, the " Vox Glaonantis " of Gower, were 

«till the voice of the people. The lurid flame from 

the faggots and the stake shone in Fleet Street itself, 

but the words of the 

poets whose books were 

handed to and fro were 

burning in the hearts 

of men, and this light 

would never be wholly 

put out. 

Neither the triumphs 
and the penalties of 
foreign conquests, the 
persecutions by prelates 
and inquisitors, nor the 
devastations of civil 
war, could quench the 
new light that had arisen 
among those who now 
found the echo of their 
own thoughts in words 
that rang with a clear 
and true note in the common language of the 
time. The genial, beaming face of old Chaucer 
was no longer to be seen in Fleet Street. The 
graver aspect and less vigorous form of Gower 
were only recalled by the memories of those 
who had known him well ; but the work of 
both remained, and that of some less dis- 
tinguished followed. The pen, slower but mightier 




RICHAED II. {From the picture in 
Wcdminster Abbey.) 



54 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [II. 

than the sword, was passed from hand to hand, and 
the message that went with it was now in the 
language of the people, and neither in French, which 
was still the official language of the Court and the 
law, nor m Latin, which till now had been the 
language of learning. 

Properly to estimate the enormous importance of 
the poems of Chaucer, Gower, Langiand, and their 
few and inferior contemporaries and immediate 
followers, we must remember that before 1350 the 
poets who sought the approbation of the higher 
classes of society -^n-ote in French. Those who tried 
to ^mte in English expressed themselves so imper- 
fectly that their work was poor and weak. The rise of 
English romance, poetry, and narrative seems to have 
been stinmlated b}' the demand of burghers, mer- 
chants, citizens, and those who would now be called 
" the middle class," for English, as distinguished 
from French or Anglo-Norman, literature. 

Down to the date when the first bookseller opened 
his shop in the Highway of Letters, the aspect of 
Fleet Street was little changed from that which it 
bore when Chaucer last looked upon it. The street 
was still unpaved ; and though, in the reign of Henry 
v., it was lighted at night b}' lanterns slung 
on ropes stretched across the road from one over- 
hangmg storey to another, the same general features, 
and even the same details, Avere to be observed in the 
localities which had even then become historical. 
Wayfarers passing from Ludgate over Fleet Bridge to 
the bars by the Temple, saw on the south side, be3'ond 



IL] THE WHITE EBIAES. 55 

the great house of Bridewell and the adjoining Bride 
Lane, the London mansion, or inn, of the Bishop of 
Sahsbury, giving its name to Salisbury Court. Beyond 
this, AVater Lane led down to the river, and next 
began the ntmierous btiildings — the Priory and the 
Church of the Carmehtes, or Vrhite Friars, to whom 
a large plot of land here in Fleet Street had been 
granted by Edward L Then church was founded by 
Sir Richard Gray in 1241, and then house was re- 
built in 1350 bv Huo-h Coitrtenav, Earl of Devon, 
the Mayor and Commons of the City having gi^anted 
to the Friars a lane which ran down fi'om Fleet 
Street to the Thames, that thereon they might 
build the west end of their church. In the reign of 
Richard II. and Henry IV. Sir Robert Knowles 
added to the already extensive settlement, and newly 
built the chm-ch, of which the choh', presbytery, 
and steeple were erected by Robert Marshall, Bishop 
of Hereford. 

Beyond the possessions of the White Friars in 
Fleet Street was Serjeants' Inn, where, as in the inn 
of the same name in Chancery Lane, a number of 
judges and serjeants-at-law had their lodgings and 
"' commons/' Beyond this were the sjoacious and 
extensive buildings, halls, and chiu'ch of the Xew 
Temple, standing in a fine garden, with its terrace on 
the river banks, and continuing as far as the to^m 
hotise or mansion of the Bishop of Exeter outside the 
Temple bars. 

On the right hrmd. or north side, of Fleet Street, 
as seen from Fleet Brid^'e lookinof westAvard, was Shoe 



56 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



Lli. 



Lane, at tlie end of which stood a great conduit or 
cistern, containing water brought by leaden pipes from 
Paddington, where the water of several springs was 
collected in a "head" belonging to the Mayor and 
Commonalty of the City. 

The conduit at Shoe Lane and the clear springs of 




^>^:t^ 



GOWEB SHOOTING AT THE WOELD. (FfOm tliC CottOH MS.) 

Holy Well and Clement's Well, just beyond the bars 
that divided Fleet Street from the Strand, insured 
the district against lack of water. It is to be re- 
marked that the provision of conduits, and other ad- 
ditions and improvements in the thoroughfares of 
the City, were mostly due to the munificence of 
wealthy citizens, Avho not only gave generously 



Ill FETTER LANE. 57 

during their lives, but often bequeathed large sums of 
money for maintaining works of public utility or for 
the relief of the poor and the sick. The history of 
the City is, so to speak, a record of the generous 
charity and public spirit of wealthy citizens, who 
recognised the truth of the scriptural saying, " There 
is that scattereth and yet increaseth." 

Beyond the conduit was " Fewter " Lane, so called, 
Stow says, of Fewtors, depraved or idle people, to be 
found lounging about the gardens there, but more 
probably from the felters, or makers of felted cloth, 
who worked there, the word "feidtre" having the 
meaning of close or compact : or it may have been 
from feutre or f autre — a rest for a spear. The church 
of St. Dunstan, with its chantries and its chapel of 
St. Katherine, stood between Fewter Lane and 
Clifford's Inn, which was the gift of Edward II. to 
Robert Clifford, at whose death his wife, Isabella, let 
the house or messuage to students of the law. 

Of Chancery, or Chancellor's, Lane, and the Rolls 
Court • we have spoken already ; opposite the latter 
was Herflete Inn, a house belonging to the Canons 
of Lincolnshire. This was close to the entrance to 
Shere, or Shire, Lane, near the bars which marked 
the limit of the western " liberty " of the City, and 
distinguished it from the shire or county. 

The customs and recreations of the people born 
in the City continued to be robust. A great deal of 
their time was spent in the open air. The sports and 
exercises of shooting with the bow, wrestling, leaping, 
and tilting at the quintain, were held in the fields 



58 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [II. 

or open spaces near the wells and springs of the 
northern suburb, where stage-plays or mysteries were 
acted at holiday seasons. We read of one such 
held at Skinners' Well, in the reign of Henry lY., 
which lasted for several days, and was attended by 
the greater number of the nobility and gentry. Its 
subject-matter began with a symbolical representation 
of the creation of the Avorld, so that it necessarily 
occupied some time in performance ; and the pro- 
cession of the performers, with their stage costumes 
and " properties," was a sight in itself 

There were sports, not only on the river and in 
the fields, but in the streets. After evening prayers 
the City apprentices in Cheapside and Fleet Street 
practised the use of staves and bucklers, and some- 
times of swords, though that was more than once 
forbidden. On May-day there were excursions of the 
Citizens to the Forest of Epping or Hainault, or to 
the wooded hills of Highgate, Hampstead, Greenwich, 
and AA^oolwich, to gather branches of the flowering 
hawthorn, which were carried home with much 
merrymaking, and hung up as decorations for the 
houses. Even great civic dignitaries did not disdain 
to go "a-maying," and the May-day was spent in 
rustic sports and dancing, either at the places whither 
the pleasure-seekers went to "bring in the may," or 
in the London streets, where may-poles were set up 
adorned with garlands, that youths and maidens of 
the City might meet to dance around them to the 
music of timbrel, pipe, and tabor. One of the 
principal may-poles was in the Strand, just beyond 



II.] FOOTBALL IN FLEET STREET. 59 

Fleet Street: another was in the ward of Aldgate, 
opposite the church of St. Andrew, and called St. 
Andrew Undershaft, because the shaft, or pole, when 
set up, was higher than the church itself 

Not only on May-day and other festivals of the 
springtide and summer, but all through the sunny 
months, there were evening games, sports, and dancing 
in the City highways, and burgesses and their dames 
sat at doors or windows, to look on, to encourage or 
control 'prentices and serving men, or to award 
wreaths and garlands to those of their maidens Avho 
were most active and graceful, or who sang the 
sweetest. 

There were also sumptuous pageants and splendid 
processions to Smithfield, whither royal and noble 
guests were invited to joust and tourney, and where 
great fairs and markets were held, not far from the 
space in front of the church of St. Bartholomew, 
where the sooty earth and blackened stones marked 
the spot on which the latest victims of stake and 
faggot had perished in the flames. 

Among the sports were several ball games, of 
which tennis was deemed the most royal, and was 
played in the courtyards of great mansions, or in 
tennis courts adjoining town and country dwellings. 
Other ball games were played in Finsbury and 
Hoxton Fields, and even in the streets. FootbaU 
was still played in Fleet Street and the Strand in 
the early part of the eighteenth century. 

The age of the Plantagenets and the Tudors was an 
age of hearty eating and drinking, of hearty work and 



60 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [II. 

play, that strengthened the limbs and expanded the 
lungs. Otherwise, the people of the City would have 
suffered more from the stuffy, low-ceilinged rooms of 
the ordinary houses, and even from the heated, but 
draughty, chambers of the more imposing mansions. 
The very banqueting rooms were not without their 
dangers, for the floors were mostly strewn with 
rushes, which, when they were fresh, were probably 
agreeable, but they were often unrenewed for several 
days, and became, as Erasmus ^vrote at a later date, 
foul with fish-bones, grease, the droppings of beer 
and wine, and all manner of abominations. 

It was in every respect a "merry," meaning an 
active, stirring time, in Fleet Street, no doubt; but 
the repeated and unprofitable wars with France had 
burdened the people of England with taxes, and the 
brilUant victor of Agincourt had, at the instigation 
of the bishops and clergy, followed the example of his 
father, in consenting to light the fires of persecution. 

Among the immediate successors of Chaucer were 
Occleve, his former pupil, and John Lydgate (called 
the " Monk of Bury "), who held the most conspicuous 
place, his writings being remarkable for versatility, 
and amazing in their extent. He Avas born at a 
village near the monastery of Bury St. Edmunds, 
of which he became deacon in 1393, and priest in 
1397. He travelled much, and after studying at 
Oxford, Paris, and Padua, was one of the men in 
England best acquainted with ancient learning and 
literature, so that he could write histories of the 
saints for the monasteries, and tales of romance and 



THE MONK OF BURY. 



61 



II.] 

chivalry for the people. As niauy as three hundred 
and seventy books bear the name of Lydgate, who 
was known not only as a poet, but as an orator, a 
mathematician, and a teacher of versification and 




PEIORY OF ST. MAEY OVEEY. 



literature, for which he had opened a school at his 
monastery. His chief works are the " Story of 
Thebes " (which he wrote as an additional " Canter- 
bury Tale"), the "Book of Troy," and "The Fall of 
Princes," a poem finely re-set in Enghsh from the 
Latin of Boccaccio. Lydgate had written for Henry 
v., but these three works of his were not completed 
till the reign of Henry VL " The Fall of Princes," 
which was in the Chaucerian stanza, was designed 
for that patron of poets and friend of learning. 



62 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [II. 

Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (" the Good Duke 
Humphrey"), who had come into j)ossession of Bay- 
nard's Castle, which he had restored after it had 
been destroyed by fire. 

Thus we have the Monk of Bury among the 
frequenters of Fleet Street, where his poems and 
stories were kno^vn even better than their author; 
for, as Warton says, ''his muse was of universal 
access, and he was not only the poet of the monas- 
tery, but of the world in general. If a disguising 
was intended by the Company of Goldsmiths, a mask 
before his Majesty at Eltham, a May game for the 
Aldermen and Sheriffs of London, a mumming before 
the Lord Mayor, a procession of pageants from the 
Creation for the festival of Corpus Christi, or a 
carol for the coronation, Lydgate Avas consulted and 
gave the poetry." 

His facility was astonishing, and among his lighter 
works one poem at least has held its own to this 
day, for in " The London Lyckpenny," telling of the 
visit of a poor tailor to London to seek redress at 
the Courts of Law, he gives a vivid and graphic 
picture of the trading of the shop-keepers in the 
streets where they pursued their callings. As we 
read the quaint verses, we seem to hear the cries 
of the apprentices and serving-men seekmg to sell 
their goods to the stranger, who for lack of money 
"could not speed." After having seen the hood 
which he had lost in the throng hung up for sale 
among much stolen gear at a stall in Cornhill, he 
spends his penny for a pint of wine, and, feeling 



nr THOMAS OCCLEVE. 63 

more himgrv because of tlie saTOiir ot" hot sheep's 
feet, prime fat beef, pies, straTrberries ripe, and 
" cherries on the rise " (or stalk), which he camiot 
buy, betakes him home again, in much the same 
mood as the more modern Scotchman who lamented 
that he had "no been twa hours in London when 
bang went saxpence." 

Thomas Occleve, born under Bow Bells, and 
afterwards hvino- at Chester's Inn, in the Strand, 
called himself the disciple of Chaucer, whose style 
he followed, though his only work of importance — 
the '' GoYernail of Princes " (a version of De Beg i mine 
PrincipUTii) — is more in the manner and with the 
motive of Gower. He was gTeatly inferior to either, 
but in respect to his '-'views'"' was nearer to Gower 
than Chaucer, inasmuch as, thoug-h he T\Tote ao-ainst 

' 'CD O 

the looseness and greed of the clergy, he was inclined 
to defend '-'orthodox" doctiine, and even to resfard 
severe pimishment for heresy as a necessary remedy. 

There were, of course, famous controversialists, and 
also famous chroniclers, in those days. One of the 
former, a AATiite Friar in Fleet Street, was Thomas 
Netter, who became principal of the Enghsh Car- 
melites, and Inquisitor General in England. He was 
regarded as chief controversialist against the followers 
of Wyclitfe, and was made confessor to Henry V. 

Another famous man earlv in the succeedino-reio^n 
was Reginald Pecock, who was made Master of 
Whittington College, by his patron, the Protector, 
Humphi-ey, Dtike of Gloucester. He was a professed 
defender of the clergy against the accusations of the 



64 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



[II. 



Lollards, but as his defences and arguments Avere 
written in plain English, so that they could be "under- 

standed of the 
people/' and as, 
moreover, he al- 
lowed that Scrip- 
ture, rather than 
tradition or Papal 
assertion, was the 
rule of faith, those 
whom he defended 
regarded him as 
one who proved 
too much. The 
Lords of the Coun- 
cil at Westminster 
refused to speak 
while Pecock — 
whom DukeHum- 
])hrey had made 
Bishop of St. 
Asaph — remained 
in the assembly. 
His books were 
burnt by the executioner; he was removed from his dig- 
nities, and though he was allowed to live, it was as a 
prisoner in a room at Thorney Abbey, in Cambridgeshire. 
Among the chroniclers and historians should be 
mentioned John Harding, a youthful retainer of 
Harry Hotspur, and afterwards a soldier at Agin- 
court, and follower of Sir Robert Umfraville. At 




STOW'S MONUMENT IN THE CHUECH OP 
ST. ANDEEW UNDEESHAFT. 



II.] LITERARY CITIZENS. 65 

a later date, Thomas Fabyan, Alderman of the 
Fleet Street Ward of Farrmgdon Without, Avas a 
compiler of history from monkish tales or the ran- 
dom legends of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Chronicles. 

That age was famous for the public spirit and 
munificence of the magnates of the City, as represented 
by the princely Whittington, who expended vast 
sums on reconstructing and endowing public buildings, 
churches, libraries, and charitable foundations in 
London. Many eminent citizens were distinguished, 
too, for their attainments in letters. Of John 
Shirley, whose tomb in the Church of St. Bartholo- 
mew (1456) is mentioned by Stow, the old chronicler 
of London, himself commemorated by a monument 
in the church of St. Andrew IJndershaft, says, "■ This 
gentleman, a great traveller in divers countries, 
amongst other of his labours, painfully collected the 
works of Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate, and other 
learned writers, which works he wrote in sundry 
volumes, to remain for posterity. I have seen them 
and partly do possess them.' 




TOMB OF GOWEE IN ST. SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK. 




A PASTON LETTEE. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE GOOD DUKE HUMPHREY. 



Good Duke Hiimplirey — Witchcraft in Baynard's Castle — Eleanor 
Cobham's Penance in Fleet Street — Sorcery — Foul Play — 
Whittington — Grey Friars and Guildhall Libraries — Value and 
Accumulation of Books in Fleet Street — The Stationers' Company 
— The Wardrobe Accounts— Stationers' Hall — Edward of York at 
Baynard's Castle — The Earl of Warwick in Fleet Street — The 
Red and "^AHiite Poses— Richard of Gloucester — His Patronage of 
Learning — William Caxton at Bruges — Meeting of Edward IV. 
and Caxton — Earl Rivers' Book — The JNlazarin Bible — First 
" Block " Printing— Movable Types— Early Printers— The '' Reed 
Pale " bj' the Almonry — First Books Printed in England—The 
Paston Letters. 

The mention of John Stow, and his remarks on the 
subject of these copies of the works of Chaucer, 
suggest to us that few important contributions to 
literature were made in the later 3^ears of Henry YI., 
in "the heavy times during the wars of York and 
Lancaster." 

The Fleet still brawled beneath its bridge, a bridge 
of stone, which had replaced the old timber structure, 
and, as Stow tells us, was " made by John Wels, 
Mayor in the year 1431, for on the coping is engraven 
Wels embraced by angels, like as on the Standard in 



111.] THE GOOD DUKE HUMPHREY. 67 

Cheape, which he also built," and the Fleet prison still 
frowned upon the stream, which encircled a portion 
of its wall. It had been rebuilt after the rebels who 
came with Wat Tyler had demolished it, and set free 
the prisoners, victims of that iniquitous " Star Cham- 
ber " Court, which was to last for two hundred years 
more, till the Stuarts gave the extra wrench to liberty 
which caused another civil war. 

The horrors of the long conflict between the 
houses of York and Lancaster make a blood-stained 
episode in the history of the realm ; yet, though the 
Highway of Letters itself rang with the din of arms, 
and echoed with the footsteps of the ruthless 
instruments of cruelty and crime. Fleet Street was 
still the resort of those who loved learning. 

In the period immediately before the Wars of the 
Roses, Humphrey of Gloucester, who had come into 
possession of Baynard's Castle, was especially popular 
with the citizens, who first named him " the Good 
Duke Humphrey," not only because he was the most 
powerful and wealthy opponent of the marriage of the 
weak and unresisting Henry YI. to the imperious and 
unscrupulous Margaret of Anjou, but also because of 
a certain splendid generosity and frankness which 
were characteristics of the man, who was among the 
most cultivated students of science and letters in that 
age. 

It was long before the Queen's favourite, Suffolk, 
Cardinal Beaufort, the Earl of Warwick, and other 
opponents of Gloucester, could compass his ruin; 
but his marriage with Eleanor Cobham, his former 

F 2 



68 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [III. 

mistress, after the refusal of the Pope to ratify his 
marriage with Jacquehne of Hainault, led indirectly 
to his being accused of participation in the treason- 
able and magic arts with which his wife was charged 
by those who for reasons of their own sought to im- 
plicate the Duke, 

Gloucester, who had devoted much attention to 
such science as belonged to the time, delighted in the 
societ}^ of learned men, and frequently invited them 
to visit him at Baynard's Castle, where there were 
apartments containing apparatus and appliances for 
scientific experiments. His chaplain, Roger Boling- 
broke, and his friend Southwell, priest and canon 
of St. Stephen's, Westminster, were proficient in 
much of the science then common, and of some 
that was uncommon. Bolingbroke was especially 
acquainted with astronomy — which then and for 
long afterwards included astrology, the two subjects 
being so closely identified that they were in many 
cases synonymous ; so that, as late as the time of the 
Commonwealth, we find them recognised under a 
common title. 

There were, of course, among the astronomical 
instruments in the chaplain's observatory in Baynard's 
Castle, tables and implements for casting nativities, 
calculating horoscopes, and determining the influ- 
ences of the stars on mundane events ; and it 
was perhaps inevitable that the Duchess, who was, 
however, known only as Dame Eleanor — daughter 
of Reginald, Lord Cobham, and herself a woman of 
considerable attainments — should have inquired of 



III.] DAME ELEANOR'S WITGRGRAFT. 69 

Bolingbroke respecting the aspect of tlie stars in 
relation to the young King, the enemies of the Duke, 
and affairs at Court. It is not improbable that, by 
associating with the learned friends of the Duke, 
she also became interested in chemistry, the search 
for the means of transmuting the baser metals 
into gold, and those so-called occult sciences which, 
in a lower direction, were associated with what 
was believed to be the practice of sorcery and witch- 
craft. 

It was, at all events, easy enough to concoct an 
accusation charging her with mahgnantly conspiring 
against the hfe and well-being of the King by the 
practice of magic. That this accusation was intended 
to strike the Duke of Gloucester is shown by the 
wording of the indictment, which set forth that his 
wife was charged mth treason, " for that she by 
sorcery and enchantment intended to destroy the 
King, to the intent to advance and to promote her 
husband to the Crown." It was impossible, there- 
fore, to mistake the ultimate aim of the Duke's 
enemies. 

She was arrested, along with Bolingbroke, South- 
well, a priest named John Hum, and a still more 
damaging acquaintance, one Margery Jourdayn, com- 
monly called " the Witch of Eye" ; but a strict examina- 
tion in St. Stephen's Chapel, before the Archbishop 
of Canterbury — a supporter of the Duke of Suffolk, 
Gloucester's enemy — failed to prove that Dame 
Eleanor had been guilty of any more deadly offence 
than that of seeking charms or " philtres " to secure 



70 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [IlF. 

the constancy and affection of her husband, a desh*e 
which, so far as the constancy was concerned, was not 
without reason. Some more flagrant offence had to 
be charged against her if the accusation was to be 
even colourably sustained, and evidence was procured 
which imputed to her an attempt to cause personal 
injury to the King by sorcery, through means a 
superstitious behef in which survived for centuries 
afterwards, and appears to Hnger still. It was as- 
serted, but not proved, that she had in her possession 
a small wax figure intended to represent the King, 
and so prepared by necromantic art that injuries 
inflicted on it would cause him to suffer. As 
this figure was gradually melted before a fire, so 
he would pine away and grow slowly weaker and 
weaker, by the melting of his bodily frame. 

It was intended that she should be condemned, 
with or without evidence ; but Gloucester was still too 
powerful for it to be safe to put her to death, and 
sentence was passed upon her that she should do 
penance in public in three places in the City of Lon- 
don, and should afterwards be kept a prisoner for 
life in the Isle of Man, under the charge of Sir John 
Stanley. Then the people of Fleet Street saw the 
sad spectacle of the wife of Good Duke Humphrey 
walking slowly barefoot along the Highway of Letters 
to stand clad in a sheet and holding a taper at 
Paul's Cross. This public disgrace and penance was 
no doubt intended not only for the punishment of the 
Duchess, but that the Duke might lose his popularity 
thereby. She was conveyed from Westminster by 



III.] DOOMED TO DEATH. 71 

boat to Temple stairs, and thence walked, with sheet 
and taper, to St. Paul's, to stand before the high altar. 
Roger BoUngbroke, a learned man, was drawn and 
quartered at Tyburn, and died protesting his inno- 
cence of all evil intentions ; Margery Jourdayn was 
burnt at Smithfield : Southwell was condemned to 
execution, but died in prison: and John Hum received 
the royal pardon. 

Gloucester appears, by all accounts, to have said 
little, but to have bided his time, Avith more patience, 
it must be said, than he displayed on less moving and 
tragic occasions. He not improbably relied on his 
popularity and the influence of his name and rank, 
and does not seem to have suspected that he was 
doomed to death. 

In 1447, about five years after the attacks upon 
him began, he, mth others, was summoned to 
attend Parliament, not at Westminster, where his 
friends the Londoners were still devoted to him, but 
at Bury St. Edmunds, the centre of the possessions 
of the Duke of Suffolk, who could insure the attend- 
ance of his dependents. The knights of the shire 
were ordered to wear arms, the streets were filled 
with men, the King Avas conveyed to the toAvn with 
a strong guard, who surrounded his lodging, as 
though he had reason to fear some evil design on the 
part of his enemies. 

Gloucester, suspecting nothing, and probably never 
thinking of personal danger, travelled from his castle 
at Devizes to be present at the ceremony of opening 
Parliament. On the following day he was arrested 



72 THE SIGSWAY OF LETTERS. [HI. 

and charged with high treason. Seventeen days after- 
wards he was found dead in his bed ; and though it 
was declared that he had died of apoplexy, and no 
marks of violence were found on his body, there was 
an almost universal belief among the people that he 
had been murdered, even as his predecessor in the 
Dukedom of Gloucester had been murdered, by the 
connivance, if not by the order, of Richard the 
Second. All his estates were seized by Suffolk ; 
and as he left no legitimate heirs, nor could 
the unhappy Eleanor claim any of her husband's 
property, Baynard's Castle reverted to the crown, 
and afterwards came into the possession of Richard, 
Duke of York. Of its later fortunes there will be 
occasion to speak presently. 

The friends of the dead Duke Humphrey reiterated 
their belief in his innocence of treason. The wrath of 
the people smouldered and spread till it burst into a 
flame, and the Commons demanded, in a voice Avhich 
would be heard, that Suffolk should be banished the 
realm for live years. He never returned — never 
reached the asylum of a foreign shore. The great 
ship-of-war, the Nicholas of the Toiver, stood off and 
on between Dover and Calais till it intercepted the 
small craft in which the fallen Minister and his 
retinue had embarked. 

Perhaps without suspicion of imminent retribution, 
the proud Duke obeyed the summons of the captain, 
and went on board the larger vessel. His foot had 
scarcely reached the deck before he was saluted with 
the ominous words, " Welcome, traitor ! " and was 



III.] 



RETRIBUTION. 



73 



made prisoner. For two days he was left with no 
company but his confessor. There was signalHng to 
and from the shore, and a small boat came alongside, 




BAYNAED'S CASTLE. 



wherein sat the executioner, with axe and block. To 
him Suffolk was consigned, and by his hand the 
Queen's favourite, who was only reaping where he 
had sown, perished. 

No inquiry seems to have been made— the dis- 
appearance of the Duke was understood, and his 
friends and enemies alike were already preparing for 



74 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [Ill 

the coming conflict, which, under the name of the 
" Wars of the Roses," has left in the history of the 
country the record of a dismal era of treachery and 
murder. 

This reference to the events of those troublous 
times may itself be regarded as an episode in the 
story of the Highway of Letters, for it marks the 
period when the latest patron of literature in Eng- 
land, before the introduction of printing, lived in 
Baynard's Castle, within hail of Fleet Street, which 
had already been so closely associated with books and 
learning. 

Nearly fifty years before that time, Sir Richard 
Whittington and his executors had, among other 
munificent provisions of that great Lord Mayor, 
begun the library of the Grey Friars, and paid half 
the cost of building and founding the Guildhall 
Library. There had been numerous and important 
additions to the superb collection of books in the 
libraries of the Temple, the other Inns of Court, and 
the monasteries of the Black and White Friars. 
A small collection of books, whether copied on paper 
or vellum, was a costly possession, but doubtless in 
the London dwelhngs of the nobility and of some 
of the wealthy citizens in Fleet Street and its neigh- 
bourhood, books had been accumulating which had 
been brought, not only from the scriptoria of abbeys 
and monasteries, and from the hands of private 
copyists in England, but from various parts of the 
continent of Europe. 

The fraternity of Stationers, who Avere not 



III.] THE STATIONERS' FRATERNITY. 75 

incorporated as a City Company till 1557, in tlie 
reign of Philip and Mary, was formed in the reign of 
Henry IV., and the bye-laws were approved by the 
civic authorities as those of "writers, lymners of 
books, and dyverse things for the Church and 
other uses." 

The law of copyright in those early times con- 
sisted of a special patent for special books, so that 
the transcribers or copyists of Stationers' Hall, which 
was then in Milk Street, Cheapside, had little interest, 
except as copyists, in any of the greater works of the 
writers of that period. 

That the trade of the '' Stationer " had a definite 
standing in regard to other than Church service 
books, psalters, paternosters, folk-stories, and ballads, 
may, however, be inferred, and it would appear that 
decorative bookbinding was included in the " lymning 
and dyverse things" belonging to their craft, for in 
an account-book of the expenditure of the keeper of 
the Wardrobe (the occasional royal residence and 
usual repository of the State garments), we find that 
in the reign of Edward lY., from April to Michaelmas 
1481, £1,174 5s. 2d. was required to pay for "velvet 
upon velvet," silks, black cloths of gold at 40s. a yard 
(i.e., somewhere about £6 of our money), feather beds, 
double-soled Spanish shoes, ostrich feathers, and 20s. 
to Piers Baudwyn (Peter Baldwin), stationer, for bind- 
ing, gilding, and dressing of a book called "Titus 
Livius," and 16s. each for a Bible, a " Froissart," 
" Josephus," and other books. 

This looks as though the lanky, handsome, brave. 



76 



TffE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



[III. 



selfish, and dissolute Edward was what in those days 
might have been called a well-read man, and an 
admirer of well-dressed books as of well-dressed 
people. Doubtless the fraternity of Stationers took 




OLD HOUSES RECENTLY DEMOLISHED IN FLEET STREET. 



their name either from the ecclesiastical stations 
or localities Avhere permission Avas given them 
to sell books of devotion, etc., or from the stands 
or stalls at fairs and markets, at which pater- 
nosters, creeds, missals, breviaries, rosaries, cruci- 



111.] SLOW DEMAND FOE PRINTED BOOKS. 77 

fixes, horn-books, and " Abseys," or A B C's, were 
sold. 

It must be remembered, however, that before 
Caxton set up his printing press at Westminster, 
printed books from Holland and Germany had come 
to England. They were less beautiful as works of 
art than some of the pen-work of the scribes, but 
there may have been some members of the Society 
of Stationers who foresaw a great future for their 
craft when books were multiplied by the rapid 
agency of movable types. That future was not far 
distant, but there was no immediate and eager 
demand for the printed volumes. The expansion 
was comparatively slow, for only a small pro- 
portion of the population could read. But there 
was another strong interest urging the minds of 
many who were among the more scholarly. The 
Reformation which had been preached by Wyc- 
liffe was being taught by other men, and long 
before the fraternity of Stationers was incorporated, 
in the reign of Philip and Mary, there had been 
a repeated banning and burning of books sus- 
pected or convicted of containing heretical doc- 
trines. 

The very reason of the incorporation of the 
Stationers into a City Company was that restrictions 
might be enforced against the dissemination of 
heretical or unorthodoix (that is to say, anti-Papal) 
opinions. But the brethren had so well prospered 
that they were looking round to find a building suit- 
able for a hall, and kept their collective eye on an old 



78 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [III. 

house on the spot where Stationers' Hall now stands 
— a house which, in the reign of Edward TIL, had 
been the palace of John, Duke of Bretagne and Earl 
of Richmond, and afterwards came into the occupa- 
tion of the Earls of Pembroke. It was not till the 
reign of Elizabeth that the Stationers were able 
to take steps for acquiring it from Lord Aber- 
gaA^enny. 

Edward, Earl of March, and Richard, Duke ot 
Gloucester, lived in Baynard's Castle, which, after 
the attainting of Duke Humphrey, came into their 
possession. It was already as splendid as a royal 
palace before Edward IV. made it his residence, for 
Richard, Duke of York, was regal in his state, more 
wealthy, and with scarcely less of baronial power, 
than Richard Nevil, the great Earl of Warwick, who, 
like the Duke of York and other nobles, had been 
summoned to Parliament, and brought hundreds of 
men-at-arms with them. The inn, or London house, 
of this " last of the barons " was but a stone's throw 
from Baynard's Castle, and occupied a large area near 
Newgate. The proud Earl kept such state there that 
Fleet Street was full of his retainers. There were 
five or six hundred of them, and their red jackets, 
embroidered with the Warwick badge of the bear and 
ragged staft, were seen in every tavern and ale-house 
in Fleet Street, as well as at the great inn itself 
The old chronicler says, "There were oftentimes 
six oxen eaten at a breakfast, and every tavern was 
full of his (the Earl's) meat, for he that had any 
acquaintance in that house might have there so much 



III.] THE RED AXD WHITE ROSES. 79 

of sodden and roast meat as he could prick and carry 
on a long dagger." 

It was at Baynard's Castle that the plans were laid 
for the conflict which drained the blood and resources 
of England ; and if we are to accept the univers- 
ally received opinion, it was in the historic garden 
of the Temple that the plucking of the red and white 
roses as badges of Lancaster and York took place. 
Over this scene Shakespeare cast the splendour of his 
genius, and by his vivid pourtrayal it has lived in 
the memory of the nation. 

At Baynard's Castle, too, after Richard Plantagenet 
was slain at Wakefield, his son Edward, Earl of 
March, was proclaimed King by the Great Council in 
1461. And here, twenty- two years afterwards, the 
subtle, cruel, and unscrupulous Richard of Gloucester 
awaited the return of Buckingham with the pre- 
tended message from the citizens, in reply to which 
Richard counterfeited a reluctant acceptance of the 
crown. 

There can be little doubt that Richard of Glou- 
cester was one of the most cultivated men of that 
time, and though he ruthlessly disregarded moral 
obligations in his settled purpose of gaining the 
throne, he was favourable to the advance of education, 
and to as much liberty of the people as would leave 
him master of the realm, b}^ enabling him to defy the 
power of the nobles and cancel the feudal claims of 
the barons. With all his unscrupulousness and cruelty, 
he has probably, on the whole, had something less than 
justice done him by the chroniclers and historians. 



80 



TBI] HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



[III. 



Nor is it veiy doubtful that all three brothers — 
Edward lY., George, Duke of Clarence, and Richard of 
Gloucester — were interested in the promotion of the 
art of prmting in England and in the estabhshment 
of Caxton at the Almonry at Westminster. The}" 
may have partly recognised how powerful an influence 
would be exercised b}^ the distribution of books and 
the dissemmation of learning among the middle 
class, the burgesses and citizens. No more certain 
means of dissolving the masterful claims of the 




EAELT PEiNTiNa. {From Leichius '■''Be Origine Typographicce Leipsiensis.^^) 



barons could be devised than that of increasing 
the already growing intelligence and encouraging 
the moderate independence ot the middle or 
trading class, and especially of the educated 
citizens. 

Richard probably foresaw that the increase of 
education, by the multiplication of books and the 
cultivation of a love for learning, would be invaluable 
at a time of transition, when he hoped by mtrigue 
and duphcity to obtain a power which he would use 



III.J CAXTON DISCOVERED. 81 

in such a way as to condone the means by Avhich he 
had arrived at it. But these royal and noble patrons 
may also have perceived that the new power was 
already beyond their control, and, moreover, that 
without their intervention it was practically in the 
hands of the learned men — the students and the in- 
telligent middle class of Germany, Holland, and 
England. 

It was by an Englishman, a member of that great 




A MODERN FEINTING MACHINE. 



commercial class, and a man of no little learning, that 
the art of printing was being made more perfect, and 
by him it was brought to London. Edward had made 
his acquaintance at Bruges during the time that the 
Earl of Warwick strove to restore Henry VI. to the 
throne. The Earl took the unhappy King from the 
Tower to Westminster in a kind of royal procession 
along Fleet Street, with the intention to make him 
a puppet, through whom he could himself usurp the 
regal authority. 



82 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [III. 

It was in or about 1455, tlie year of the battle of 
St. Albans, that the Bible Avas printed at Mayence 
by John of Gutenberg, who first, in 1438, introduced 
movable types, to be used instead of blocks for each 
page, the previous and more laborious way of printing. 
This Bible, kno^yn as the Mazarin Bible, because it 
was found in the library of Cardinal Mazarin, was 
printed when Caxton was about thirty-four years of 
age. 

Caxton, who was born in the Weald of Kent, had 
been apprenticed to the business of a mercer in the 
City of London. He must have attained considerable 
knowledge and no little distinction, for he Avas after- 
wards appointed Governor of the English merchants 
in Bruges, whither he seems to have been sent by the 
leaders of his guild, and where a considerable number 
of his countrymen and fellow-traders had taken up 
their residence, and required a person in authority to 
exercise control and to support their privileges. He 
had been employed, with one other person, in ar- 
ranging a commercial treaty with the good Duke 
Philip, and now, though a man of some wealth and 
station, had become attached to the household of 
the Duke's son and successor, and of the Duchess — 
sister of Edward lY. of England. There it was that 
Edward and Earl Kivers found the patient, pains- 
taking copyist at work translating and transcribing 
the " Recuyell of the Histor^^es of Troye," and to 
him Rivers submitted for correction his translation 
from the French of " Dictes and Sayings of the 
Philosophers." 



III.] MOVABLE TYPES. 83 

But Caxton had already heard of the improve- 
ments made in the art of printing, and was as 
eager as so patient a man could be to test the 
new invention, by which copies of books could be 
multiplied in a short time, and with comparatively 
little labour. His translation of the " Recuyell," and 
the work of copying, had occupied a considerable 
time, and copies were in demand at a very large 
price; but the process was slow, and the copyist, 
who possessed, at all events, a competence, had 
higher aims than mere money-making, though his 
commercial training appears to have made him 
prudent, even in following the calling in which he 
had seen that such great results must be attained. 
In his case enthusiasm was happily tempered by 
prudence. 

His attention was directed to the mode of print- 
ing from movable types by one Colard Mansion, who 
was endeavouring to introduce into Bruges the in- 
vention by which Fust, Gutenberg, and Schceffer had 
already produced an edition of the Bible which 
could scarcely be distinguished from the most perfect 
manuscript. Caxton was ready to provide the money 
for setting up a printing office, and, aided by Man- 
sion, to issue from the press his translation of the 
"Recuyell of the History es," the first book printed 
in English. 

Caxton was already a man of about fifty-tive when 

he returned to England, and (afterwards, if not at 

first), with Wynkyn de Worde as an assistant, set 

up a printing press at Westminster in a house called 

g2 



84 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [III. 

the Reed Pale, in the Ahnonry (or place for the 
distribution of alms), near the west door of West- 
minster Abbey.^ There, for fifteen years, till his 
death in 1491, he carried on the business of printer, 
publisher, and bookseller. 

One of Caxton's trade circulars, or advertisements, 
ran thus : " If it pies ony man, spirituel or temporel, 
to bye ony pyes (piece) of two and three Comemor- 
RACios of Salisburi vse, enprynted after the forme 
of this preset lettre, which ben wel and truly cor- 
rect, late hym come to Westmonester, into the 
Almonesrye, at the Reed Pale, and he shall have 
them good chepe." There must have been a great 
flutter in the Abbey precincts when the printed 
books began to circulate, and afterwards when 
AVynkyn de Worde was looking up and down Fleet 
Street to find a place in which to continue the busi- 
ness; for, at the abbey — as in the vicinity of other 
important churches — was a scrijytormon, to which 
people resorted to buy copies of books, and a number 
of copyists had taken up their quarters there. The 
name of one of them (W. Evesham), who says that 
he is hving at some cost in the Sanctuary at AVest- 
minster, occurs in " The Paston Letters " — in a book 
bill dated 1468. 

These origmal letters, written during the reigns 



* Caxton's house is said to have been a three-storeyed building, 
with a bold gable, on the spot now occupied by the entrance to the 
AVestminster Palace Hotel. It had a gallery running round the 
upper storey. It fell down when other buildings in the Almonry were 
puUed down to make Victoria Street in 1845. 



III.] THE FASTON LETTERS. 85 

of Henry YI., Edward IV., and Richard III, are, 
it may be said in passing, a most interesting and 
mstructive chronicle, and, though they deal chiefly 
with the vicissitudes and experiences of one family, 
are, in fact, a varied record of three generations, 
and afford a singularly complete picture of the 
times. 



^(Ki^ton (ti "H^^tyn^iix^ tfje^r^ of our fossil -^IT^^ 



FAC- SIMILE OF CAXTON'S PKINTING. 




COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS. WARWICK LAXE— THE QIJADE ANGLE. 



CHAPTER lY. 



THE NEW LEARXIXG 



The Study of Greek — Greek Philosophy in the Highway of Letters — 
Linacre— The College of Physicians in Knightrider Street : At 
Amen Corner: In ^Varwick Lane — The Faculty — Garth and "The 
Dispensary" — Harvey — Colet — Lil)- — Fisher, Bishop of Rochester 
— Thomas More — Pynson, the King's Printer, by St. Dimstan's 
Church — W}Tikyn de \Yorde at the Sun — Sir John More on 
Marriage — Cardinal Morton — The Bishop's Strawhen-ies — Thomas 
More Under-Sheriif of London — Famous Footsteps in Fleet 
Street. 

The stimulus wliicli had been given to learning in 
the chief countries of Europe, by the influence of Italy 
and the energy of Cosmo dei Medici, was associated 
with the introduction of the study of Greek, which 
had been taken to the schools by those fugitive Greek 
scholars who sought refuge in other countries after 



lY.] TEE GREEK LEABNING AND LETTERS. 87 

the fall of Constantinople. With Greek came that 
remarkable enthusiasm for the philosophy of Plato, 
which introduced into the more modern world of 
letters purer and less sensuous views, and a nobler and 
more truly intellectual wisdom than existed in the 
schools of Aristotle. In Yenice and in Florence the 
wealth and power of the Medici had been established, 
and the successful banker and poHtician who repre- 
sented them at the time that the invention of printing 
was to give the vast and irrepressible impetus to learn- 
ing which soon after followed, took up the Greek 
philosophy and the collecting of Greek writings with 
characteristic ardour. 

Numbers of able scholars travelled to Florence, to 
acquire the language in which a new field of thought 
was being opened, and the New Learning soon spread 
to other countries, where rulers, hke our Henry the 
Seventh, were ready to encourage it. Greek was first 
taught in England, at Oxford, by WilUam Groc}TL, of 
Bristol, who was educated at Winchester School, 
became Prebendary of Lincoln, went to Italy to 
study, and returned in 1491, to settle at Oxford as 
teacher of Greek at Exeter College. A younger man, 
Thomas Linacre, of Canterbury, being sent by Henry 
on a mission to Rome, stayed for some time at 
Florence for the purpose of studpng Greek, and 
returned to England to take the degTee of Doctor 
of Medicine, in which capacity he became a lecturer, 
while, as a learned professor, he taught Greek and 
Latin till he became both physician and tutor to the 
young Prince Arthur. 



88 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [lY. 

There was no lack of learned men in the be- 
ginning of the sixteenth century, but it was not a 
period in which much advance was made in what 
may be called national literature. 

Thomas More was only twenty years old in the 
year 1500, and his literary work, by which he made 
such a distinguished mark in the world of letters, 
came later. John Fisher was Bishop of Rochester in 
1504. Dr. John Colet, son of Sir Henry Colet, mercer, 
twice Lord Mayor of London, was Dean of St. Paul's 
and friend of the learned Erasmus, who visited Eng- 
land in 1497, and walked in the Highway of Letters, 
probably discussing with the famous Dean the found- 
ation of that school for 153 children of poor men 
which, in 1512, was established in St. Paul's Church- 
yard, from which it has only of late 3^ears been 
removed. William Lily, author of the well-known 
Latin grammar, which continued as a school book 
for nearly three centuries, was the first master of 
the school. The echoes of the footsteps of these men 
were heard in Fleet Street at the beginning of the 
Tudor reign, for Linacre lived in Knightrider Street, 
near Lud Gate and Baynard's Castle, and it was at his 
own house that he founded the College (now the 
Royal College) of Physicians. There the first members 
of that learned body met for consultation and dis- 
cussion. 

The house in Knightrider Street was bequeathed 
to the College by Linacre, and the building on the 
site of it remained till comparatively recent times as 
the property of the institution. 



lY. 



THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS. 



89 



From Knightrider Street the College moved to 
Amen Corner, where Harvey afterwards taught and 
lectured on the circulation of the blood. The building 
there perished in the Fire of London, after which Sir 




EMBLEMATIC DEVICE. {From the English version of Fisher'' s *' Need oj 
Prayer;' 1513.) 



Christopher Wren erected a more imposing edifice in 
Warwick Lane, which continued to be known as 
the College of Physicians to within living memory, 
and till it had been converted into a meat market. 
It was of this building, near Newgate, that Garth, in 
his satirical poem, " The Dispensary," wrote — 

" Not far from that most celebrated place, 
Where angry justice shows her awful face, 
Where little villains must submit to fate, 
That great ones may enjoy the world in state — 
There stands a Dome majestic to the sight. 
And sumptuous arches bear its oval height ; 



90 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [lY. 

A golden globe, placed high with artful skill, 
Seems to the distant sight — a gilded pill." 

Linacre, Colet, Lily, Fisher, and Thomas More, the 
group of famous men who may be said to have repre- 
sented the world of letters in England at the beginning 
of the sixteenth century, were all familiarly associated 
with Fleet Street, and, like other promoters of learn- 
ing, must have been well acquainted with Wynkyn de 
Worde, who, after the death of his master and 
partner, Caxton, had set up his press and shop at 
the sign of the Sun. The shop of Richard Pynson, 
his companion, who, in 1508, was appointed printer to 
Henry YIL, was by the side of St. Dunstan's Church, 
close to Temple Bar. There appears to have been no 
sign to Pynson's shop, but Wynkyn de AYorde chose 
the Sun, as emblematical of the light which was to 
be diffused by the art of the printer, a metaphor 
which, in another form, was emphasised by a printer 
named Day, who, a few years later, had his press-room 
and shop over Alders Gate, and took for his sign the 
motto, " Arise, for it is Day." 

John Fisher, the learned bishop, who had been 
confessor to the Lady Margaret, Countess of Rich- 
]nond, mother of Henry YIL, was a liberal promoter 
of learning, though he was a zealous opponent of 
the Reformation, and in his later days supported the 
contention of Henry YIIL against Luther, the Pope's 
sentence on whom he pronounced in a sermon at 
Paul's Cross, in the presence of Cardinal Wolsey, who 
was then the Papal legate. 

Alas ! he had afterwards leisure, as a close prisoner 



IV.] THOMAS MORE. 91 

in the Tower, to meditate on the mutabihty of human 
affairs and the unstable consciences of tyrannical 
princes. The king, Henry VIIL, whose early child- 
hood he had watched, and to whom in later manhood 
he had been a counsellor, sent his grey head to the 
block with a brutal and bitter jest.* That head, 
hoisted on a pole on London Bridge, was followed 
eight days afterwards by the head of Sir Thomas 
More, also famous throughout Europe for learning, 
and said by a competent judge to have been in his 
early days the only wit in England, f 

More was the son of Sir John More, knight, a 
justice of the King's Bench, and may have inherited 
a witty faculty from his father, who, having been 
three times married, was doubtless entitled to say, 
as it is recorded he did say, " Marriage is like 
dipping the hand into a bag where there are twent}^ 
snakes and one eel — it being twenty to one that you 
do not get the eel." 

It may be remarked, in parenthesis, as having a 
singular relation to this saying, that Thomas More 
himself, when he had risen to great fame and some 
fortune by practising in the law courts, wished to 

* While Bishop Fisher was a prisoner in the Tower, a cardinal's 
hat was sent to him from Rome — an indirect and arrogant defiance of 
Henry by Pope Paul, no doubt ; but the King, in an access of fury, 
cried out, " Ha ! Paul may send him the hat ; I will take care that 
he have never a head to wear it on," and the aged prelate was there- 
upon ordered to be executed. His naked body was exposed to the 
gaze of the populace, and then thrown, without coffin or shroud, into 
a grave in the churchyard of Allhallows, Barking, near the Tower. 

f Dean Colet — "There is but one wit in England, and that is 
young Thomas More. " 



92 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



[lY. 



marry the second daughter of a gentleman named 
Colt, of Essex ; but out of regard to the probable dis- 
appointment of the older daughter, in being passed 
over, proposed to and married her instead. This 
is but an example of the singular conscientious- 
ness of the man who, 
for a long time in 
his early years, lived 
a life of penance and 
discipline, and when 
he beca^me a suc- 
cessful pleader would 
take no fees from 
poor clients, nor 
from widows and 
orphans. His grave, 
thoughtful face, the 
firm but humorous 
mouth, the bright, 
penetrating eyes, must have been familiar in Fleet 
Street. Born in Milk Street, West Chepe, he was 
a veritable Londoner, first educated at the then 
famous school of St. Anthony, Threadneedle Street, 
from which he went into the service of Cardinal 
Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chan- 
cellor to Edward IV. 

Morton had been Master of the Rolls in 1479, and 
afterwards became Bishop of Ely, living at a mansion 
with a fine garden in Ety Place, Holborn. This 
garden, like some others in the City and suburb, was 
famous for its fruit, and especially for strawberries, 




THOMAS MORE. {From the Portrait by 
Holbein.) 



IV.] MORTON AND MORE. 93 

Thus Shakespeare makes the designing Richard of 
Gloucester say to Morton — 

" My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn, 
I saw good strawberries in your garden there : 
I do beseech you send for some of them." 

The Cardinal Bishop Morton died in 1500, but he 
had sent his young friend, 
Thomas More, to Oxford, 
to learn Greek of Linacre 
and Grocyn ; for it was 
customary for the noble 
patrons to whom younger 
sons of good families were 
sent as pages and confi- 
dential attendants, to pro- 
vide for the promotion and 
preferment of their pro- 
teges, and to undertake the 
completion of their educa- 
tion. 

After leaving the Uni- 
versity, More returned to London, and a year before 
his father died became a student of law at Lincoln's 
inn. At twenty-one he was returned to Parliament, 
and not long after he had been called to the bar, was 
appointed under-sheriff of London. The independ- 
ence which he maintained to the end of his life 
was manifested in his opposing the application of 
Henry YIL to Parliament for a subsidy to provide a 
marriage portion for the Princess Margaret. 

More was for two or three years Reader at Furnival's 




THE ISLAND OF UTOPIA. (Fvom 

the Edition of 1518.) 



94 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [I^- 

Inn, and at the time that his favourite daughter 
Margaret (afterwards Margaret Roper) was born he 
hved in Bucklersbury. It was probably there that he 
wrote in Latin the " Utopia/' that dehghtfal essay 
which has given a word to our common language, 
and with Avhich later generations became famihar 
through its translation into English by Bishop 
Burnet. This book can scarcely be read without a 
feeling of keen regret that, as the author grew older, 
he theoretically, if not practically, abandoned the 
principle of complete religious freedom, which he so 
distinctly set forth as being necessary to a perfect 
condition of a State and of society. Not alone 
in the " Utopia," but in many of his letters and 
recorded conversations, the tender humanity, the 
piety, the gentle humour of this foremost writer 
of the period, so delight us that it is difficult to 
understand how, by his voice and pen, he could com- 
mend the harsh punishments, the persecutions, and 
even the doing to death of so-called "heretics." But 
the cruelties and oppressions inflicted in the name 
of religion are scarcely to be equalled even by the 
crimes that are perpetrated in the name of liberty; 
and, it must never be forgotten that More, having 
the courage of his convictions, eventually became 
a martyr to a charge of treason founded on a differ- 
ence of opinion. 

It was More's scrupulous and lively conscience, as 
well as his comparative indifference to the attain- 
ment of wealth or of high station as a reward for 
subserviency, which caused Henry YIII. to stop 



IV.] WOLSEY'S FALL. 95 

short at admiration for his great abihty, deHght in 
his wit and pleasure in his society, and to refrain 
from taking him for an adviser and following his 
counsel. Wolsey, a less scrupulous, a more ambitious, 
and a far more artful, showy confidant, was already 
in a position alternately to rival and to truckle 




to the King, who for so many years remained on 
terms of friendly intimacy with the great Cardinal. 
But Henry cast him away at last, in a manner 
which it would have been hopeless to attempt with a 
man like More, who in his wise integrity was immov- 
able against the temptations of wealth or ambition. 



CHAPTER V. 

KING, CARDINAL, AND SATIRIST. 

Wolsey in Chancery Lane — A Harmony in Crimson — In tlie Palace of 
Bridewell — The Fall of Wolsey — Gorgeous Pageantry in Fleet 
Street — The Marching Watch — The Highway of Letters at Night 
— Wholesale Hanging — Horn Lantern Bearers — The Bellman — 
JMilton — Herrick — John Skelton — His Lampoons on Wolsey — 
*' Speke Parrot " — The Star Chamber. 

The series of striking scenes, picturesque pageants, 
and splendid processions which marked different 
periods in the reign of the much-married and much- 
murdering Henry the Eighth, and give gorgeous 
colour and regal pomp to the aspects of its history, 
are chiefly associated with Fleet Street — the highway 
from Westminster and the palace of St. James to the 
palace of Bridewell and the prison-palace of the Tower. 
Down Chancery Lane rode the great Cardinal 
Wolsey, Archbishop of York, on his way to the Rolls 
Court, to Lincoln's Inn, or to some noble house like 
that of the Bishop of Ely, in Holborn. It is recorded 
that he himself once had a house at the Holborn end 
of the Chancellor's Lane, on the west side, but this 
would probably have been before he had mounted on 
the wings of fortune, and had begun to think of a 
more palatial abode ; before he appeared in public in 
almost regal state — in a robe of crimson taffeta and 
satin, black velvet tippet, edged with sable (the royal 
fur), and wearing a rich biretta or cap, while the red 
hat which marked the cardinalate was borne before 



Y.] W0L8EY IN FLEET STREET. 97 

him on a cushion, along with the broad seal of 
England, which bespoke his rank as Lord Chancellor. 
Thus he rode in the Highway of Letters, preceded by 
a serjeant-at-arms bearing a silver mace, and by 




''-----i -\rf ^'^-^ ^._ 





HALL OF ELY HOUSE IN 1772. 

ushers who cried aloud to clear the way for " His 
Grace of York." The crimson saddle and housings 
of his mule made a flush of colour, a " harmony in 
red," amidst a glittering cavalcade of bearers of silver 
crosses, pillow-bearers, attendants mounted on horses 
with scarlet trappings, and footmen bearing pole- 
axes or halberds. 

Thus "^the proudest man alive," as Cavendish, his 
gentleman usher, once said he was, rode to the trial of 
Queen Catherine at the great hall of the Black Friars, 
while Henry was living at the sumptuous palace of 
Bridewell, which he had rebuilt. 



98 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [V. 

In the same state the Cardinal Chancellor prob- 
ably rode to that Parliament which also met at 
Black Friars, before he fell from his high estate, and 
looked no more upon the face of the Sovereign who 
abandoned him to the ruined ambition which to him 
meant death. 

It was in the palace of Bridewell that the Cardinal 
received the intimation of his approaching disgrace 
from the hand of t& King himself; as depicted by 
the great dramatist : — 

*' The letter, as I live, with all the business 
I writ to his holiness. Nay then, farewell ! 
I have touched the highest point of all my greatness ; 
And, from that full meridian of my glory, 
I haste now to my setting : I shall fall 
Like a bright exhalation in the evening, 
And no man see me more." 

Wolsey's last appearance in the vicinity of the 
Highway of Letters was when, after making an in- 
ventory of his magnificent jewels, plate, cloth of gold, 
silks and tapestries, which he surrendered with the 
rest of his property, valued at the immense sum of 
500,000 crowns, he entered his superb barge of state 
that he might go to Putney on the way to Esher. 

As we all know, he died at Leicester Abbey, on the 
journey from York. His wealth had been taken by 
the Crown, and York Place became the royal palace 

of Whitehall :— 

• 

1st Gent. Sir, 

You must no more call it York Place ; that is past, 
For, since the Cardinal fell, that title 's lost : 
'T is now the King's, and called Whitehall. 

Zrd Gent. I know it: 



y.] A FICTITIOUS CLAIM. 99 

But 't is so lately alter'd, that the old name 

Is fresh about me. — Henri/ VIII. , Act iv., Scene 2. 

By some error or perversity an old house by the 
Temple, opposite Chancery Lane, has of late years 
been called " The Palace of Henry the Eighth and 
Cardinal Wolsey," as though there had been a palace 
in that locality shared by the imperious Sovereign and 
the magnificent Minister. The decorations that dis- 
tinguished the front of one of the old buildings were, 
perhaps, to be attributed to Sir Amias Paulet, when 
he was imprisoned in the gate-house of the Middle 
Temple, by order of the Cardinal, who imposed a 
fine by ordering him to rebuild the portal. 

Cavendish tells us that Sir Amias had re-edified 
it very sumptuously, " garnishing the same on the 
outside thereof with cardinals' hats and arms, and 
divers other devices, in so glorious a sort that he 
thought thereby to have appeased his old unkind 
displeasure." 

Aubrey (1680) says that the devices had been 
defaced, for it was carved in very mouldering stone, 
but the arms of Paulet, with the quarterings, were in 
the glass. It was rebuilt by Wren about 1684, but 
some decorations of a similar kind seem to have been 
given to the front of the neighbouring building, which 
was the ofiice of the Chancellors of the Duchy of 
Cornwall to Prince Henry, eldest son of James the 
First. Henry YIJI. had no palace between Bridewell 
and Westminster till he converted York Place into a 
royal dwelling. 

Even before the royal house of Bridewell was rebuilt 

H 2 



100 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [V. 

and became a palace, Henry was familiar with Fleet 
Street and the City, east and west of St. Paul's, On 
the 20th of June, 1509, the young King and Queen 
rode in great pomp from the Tower to Westminster, 
through the City, which was adorned with rich silks 
and tapestry and in some parts with gold brocade ; 
the Lord Mayor, aldermen, sheriffs, and City Com- 
panies attending the procession. 

His Highness had already caused all " foreign " 
(which meant provincial or suburban) beggars to be 
banished the City and dispersed to their respective 
parishes. He had also committed to the Tower 
Empson and Dudley, the extortioners employed by 
his father to impose taxes on the citizens, and many 
of the subordinate agents of these detested commis- 
sioners were made to stand in the pillory in Fleet 
Street and to ride through the main thoroughfares 
with labels in their hats and their faces to the horses' 
tails, amidst execrations and the more material hos- 
tilities of pelting with filth and market refuse. 

In that same year, on Midsummer Eve (or the 
Eve of St. John the Baptist), Henry, disguised as a 
yeoman of the Royal Guard, had been in Chepe to 
witness the grand cavalcade of the City Watch — a 
spectacle which must have been completely after his 
o^vn taste, for it was a march of two thousand men, 
splendidly bedight and armed. Amidst their ranks 
were many superb pageants, illuminated with nearly a 
thousand large lanterns borne upon poles upon men's 
shoulders, and cressets, or metal baskets, in which 
tarred rope, set on fire, cast a flickering glare on 



Y.] THE MARCH OF THE WATCH. 101 

halberds, corselets, helmets and sumptuous coats of 
mail, and robes of silk embroidered in gold and silver. 
On the houses on each side of the streets hung oil 
lamps, enclosed in glass and decorated with garlands 
of flowers and greenery of birch branches and St. 
John's wort. 

Here and there some enterprising trader had fixed 
a branch of iron curiously wrought and hung with 
many lamps, which gleamed and glittered like stars. 
The procession was headed by the City music, followed 
by the Lord Mayor's officers in splendid liveries. The 
sword-bearer, on horseback and in superb armour, pre- 
ceded the Lord Mayor, who was mounted on a horse 
richly caparisoned, and attended by a giant and two 
pages, three pageants, a company of morris dancers, 
and a number of footmen. The sheriffs followed in 
similar state, and after them came detachments of 
demi-lancers, in bright armour and riding stately 
horses ; carabineers in fustian coats, with the City 
arms on the backs and breasts ; archers, with bows 
bent and sheaves of arrows by their sides ; pikemen and 
halberdiers, in corselets and helmets ; billmen, with 
helmets and aprons of mail ; and with each division, 
musicians, drums, standards and ensigns. The m.arch 
began at the conduit in West Chepe. The streets were 
thronged with spectators. Before the march began 
tables had been set before the houses, with bread and 
cakes and flagons of ale and wine, served by the City 
'prentices. Ladies and the ^vi\es of the citizens sat in 
the windows and the balconies or galleries which 
overhung shops and stalls. The sounds of song 



102 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



[V. 




^T-ff^""^' 



LUD-GATE. (Froin a print published 
about 1750.) 



and lute and many voices in concert were heard with- 
in, until the fanfare of trumpets, the roll of drums, 

and the great hum and 
shout of the multitude 
increasing in volume, 
showed that the proces- 
sion had begun. The 
steady radiance which 
filled the streets was 
broken by shifting lights, 
by the glare of rising 
flame reflected from 
steel and gold, and flash- 
ing in wavelets of fire, 
as the living stream 
poured on — the grey 
smoke from the cressets and torches hanging in a 
fantastic wreath in the upper air. 

Under the City wall by Ludgate a great bonfire 
threw a strange light upon the mighty steeple of St. 
Paul's, and the ruddy glow was reflected in the Fleet. 
Lud Gate itself was open, and in the great space before 
the Cathedral another bonfire threw a brilliant gleam 
into every jewelled windoAv, illumined every pinnacle, 
and seemed to change into flickering, fantastic shapes 
every carving of cornice and gargoyle in that vast 
west porch. 

"Thy goodly buildings, that till then did hide 
Their rich array, opened their windows wide. 
Where Kings, great peers, and many a noble dame, 
Whose bright pearl-glittering robes did mock the flame 
Of the night's burning lights, did sit to see 
How every senator in his degree, 



Y.] THE SWABM OF THIEVES. 103 

Adorned with shining gold and purple weeds, 
And stately mounted on rich-trapped steeds, 
Their guard attending, through the streets did ride 
Before their foot-bands, graced with glittering pride 
Of rich gilt arms." 

Twice each year the ceremony of the marching of 
the City Watch took place, and on the next occasion — 
on the Eve of St. Peter — the young King was accom- 
panied by the Queen and the Court. This was all 
very delightful, and the procession was a worthy spec- 
tacle even for a King ; but the picturesque force was 
an expensive institution, and on the nights when 
there was no procession, and neither moon nor lamps 
to light the streets — except a few dim horn lanterns, 
each containing a candle and slung on a rope or 
placed in a window — the foot-pads, cut-purses and 
rioters were about as little under terror of the armed 
watchmen as they were in the days of Dogberry and 
Verges. The show had lasted for about thirty years, 
when Henry took more emphatic measures for terrify- 
ing evil-doers, by hanging a few hundred of them as 
warnings. The citizens were loth to part with the 
pageant, but attempts to revive its former glories 
were ineffectual. Almost equally ineffectual was the 
resort to hanging all the rogues who could be caught, 
though Harrison tells us that Henry (he had grown 
fond of the gallows in the later part of his reign) had 
hung up, of great thieves and petty thieves and rogues, 
three score and twelve thousand during his reign, and 
adds, '•' He seemed for a while greatly to have terrified 
the rest ; but since his death the number of them is 
so increased, that except some better order be taken, 



104 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTEE8. [Y. 

and tlie law already made be better executed, such as 
dwell in uplandish towns and little villages shall live 
but in small safety and rest." This was in 1586, and 
the City Watch had been put down in 1540. All 
attempts to revive it were abandoned in 1569, when a 
standing watch was appointed for the safety and 
preservation of the City. Then came the watchman, 
who commenced his rounds by reminding the in- 
habitants of City streets to hang out their lights, and 
kept light sleepers awake half the night by shouting, 

" Lan thorn and a whole candle light ! 
Hang out your lights ! Hear ! " 

the "hear " being a vociferous ejaculation. 

In the time of Queen Mary the watchman was 
made a peace-breaker by being furnished mth a 
bell, and though, in a later day, Milton's poetical 
fancy invested even the bell with a certain grace, it 
must have been as intolerable a nuisance and as con- 
venient a warning to depredators as the clump of the 
modern policeman's boots under our window. When 
will some poet of our own day give us a verse on 
the policeman's boot, like that of Milton in the 
" Penseroso " ? — 

" Some still removed place will fit, 
Where glowing embers through the room 
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom. 
Far from all resort of mirth, 
Save the cricket on the hearth, 
Or the hellman's drowsy charm, 
To hless the doors from nightly harm." 

How these lines suggest some quiet bye-way in 
Fleet Street, or some City precinct, some secluded 



v.] 



WATCHMEN IN THE CITY. 



105 



nook or off-shoot of the Highway of Letters, like 
the poet's dwelling in St. Bride's Churchyard, or a 
sequestered abode, like his garden-house in Aldersgate 
Street ! His memories of the night-hours in Bread 




PAUL'S, WITH THE SPIRE. {From BufjclaWs ^^ History of St. 
FauVs, 1658.) 



Street, Cheapside — where he was born — may have 
suggested the "drowsy charm." If Milton could thus 
invest the watchman with interest, so could Herrick, 
but in his more robust and turbulent manner. Her- 
rick's watchman, as introduced in the '' Hesperides," 
is not a man to promote somnolence. He wakes up 
his hearers to assure them of their safety, rouses them 
effectually to encourage them to sleep securely — 

" From noise of scare fires rest ye free, 
From murders, Benedicite, 
From all mischance tliat may fi-ight 



106 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [Y. 

Your pleasing- slumbers in the night, 
Mercy secure ye all, and keep 
The goblins from ye while ye sleep. 
Past one o'clock, and almost two ; 
My masters all, ' good-day to you.' " 

Herrick, the erratic parson, may have "\mtten this 
when he left the dull seclusion of his rude bachelor 
cottage in his distant western parish, and came to 
London for a few days' bout in Fleet Street and the 
world of letters with Ben Jonson, or a night or two at 
the " Devil " Tavern, in the later days of the Apollo, 
when Ben was growing old, and the drama was on 
the decline. 

Among the frequenters of Fleet Street, as the 
Highway of Letters, we might almost include King 
Henry himself in his earlier years, for he, at all events, 
took some place in the literature of his time, and by 
no means an insignificant place either. 

The golden-haired, ruddy-faced, stalwart 3^oung 
Sovereign was no poor judge of a poem or an 
essay. His first tutor was a poet, and one who 
walked in the Highway of Letters in his later, as in his 
earlier, days, and had stood high in the estimation of 
Henry the Seventh. His name, John Skelton, should 
be mentioned along with the names of the early 
teachers of Greek and tutors of the royal princes. He 
was already known as a writer of verse in 1480 to 1490, 
and before the latter year had graduated at Oxford as 
Poet Laureate, a degree in grammar, including versi- 
fication and rhetoric. It was after he had taken 
holy orders, about 1498, that he was appointed tutor 
to the young prince Henry. He was promoted to 



Y.] JOHN 8KELT0N. 107 

the rectorship of Diss, in Norfolk, and died in 1529, 
in AVestminster Abbey Sanctuary, where he had taken 
refuge to escape the wrath of Wolsey, who had once 
been his friend, but against whose later assumptions 
he had written some quaint and scathing satirical 
verse, in a form which, though it seemed much like 
a jumble of rhymes, was obviously meant to hold the 
masterful Cardinal up to public scorn. 

So highly were Skelton's earlier poems in Latin 
and English appreciated by scholars, that Erasmus, 
in a Latin ode dedicated to the boy prince, then nine 
years old, speaks of the tutor as a special light and 
ornament of British literature, a guide to the sacred 
sources of learning. Caxton also had spoken of him 
in his translation from the French of a prose romance 
founded on the J^neid, and begged that "Mayster 
John Skelton" would correct any errors that he 
might find in it. 

Skelton was not only inclined (so the Dominicans 
said) to the doctrines of the Reformers, but he had 
actually married the mother of his children, and so 
broken the rule of celibacy. This was sufficient 
reason for regarding him with suspicion ; but he 
was also a man of the people, and had, in an alle- 
gorical poem, after the manner of Gower, given a 
voice to their complaints. 

At that time, the parrot — made familiar as a 
household pet after the voyages of Columbus — was 
not uncommonly found in the houses of the gentry. 
Under the title of "Speke Parrot," Skelton, in a 
jumble of rhyming, jingling lines — after the manner 



108 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [Y. 

of Cliaucer's seven-lined stanza — issued half-concealed 
sarcasm against Wolsey. It is easy, even now, to see 




OLD ST. PAUIi S FE03iI THE SOUTH-^VTEST, ATTEE THE FALL OF THE SPIEE. 

(From DugdaWs '^ Sistori/ of St. FauPs,^' 1658.) 



that by " Bo-ho 1 " and " Hough-ho I " he meant the 
King and Wolsey when he ^Tote : — 

" Bo-ho doth bark well, hut Hough-ho he ruleth the ling, 
From Scarpaiy to Tartary renown therein doth spring, 
"With ' He said ' and ' We said,' I wot now what T wot. 
Quod magnus est dominus Judas Searioth." 

Under this semblance of nonsense verses, he also 
published " Why come ye not to Court ? " in which 
some of the lines are aimed with sufficient coarseness 
at the Cardinal's alleged origin : — 

" Our barons be so bold, 
Into a mouse-hole they wold 



v.] ''WHY COME YE NOT TO COURT?" 109 

Ein away and creep, 
Like a meiny of sheep ; 
Dare not look out at dur 
For dread of the mastiff cur, 
For dread of the butcher's dog, 
"Wold wirry them like an hog. 

For an this cur do gnar 

They must stand all afar, 

To hold up their hand at the bar ; 

For all their noble blood 

He plucks them by the hood, 

And shakes them by the ear, 

And brings them in such fear. 



Thus royally doth he deal, 
Under the King's broad seal, 
And in the checker he them checks ; 
In the Star Chamber he nods and becks. 
And beareth him there so stout. 
That no man dare rowt (snort), 
Duke, earl, baron, nor lord. 
But to his sentence must accord. 



The King^s Court should have the excellence, 
But Hampton Court hath the pre-eminence, 
And Yorke's place, 
With my lord's grace, 
To whose magnificence 
Is all the confluence. 
Suits, and supplications, 
Embassades of all nations." 

In yet another piece, called " Colin Clout," in the 
name of the people he calls upon the prelates, the 
bishops of estates, to open the " broad gates of their 
spiritual charge, and come forth at large, like lanterns 
of light in the people's sight, in pulpits authentic, for 
the weal public." 

The Speaking Parrot, in one incisive line, gives 
a reason for Wolsey's arrogance : " He carrieth a King 



110 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [T. 

in his sleeve if* all the world fail : " and says : " Since 
Deucalion's flood there were never seen so many 
thieves hanged and thieves never the less ; so much 
prisonment for matters not worth an haw ; so bold a 
braggmg butcher, and flesh sold so dear ; so many 
plucked partridges, and so fat quails ; so mangy a cur 
the great gTeyhound's peer." 

These extracts are not the most violent and 
vituperative, and they give us a singularly vivid 
suggestion of the time just preceding that still worse 
day, after Wolsey's death, when the great greyhound 
himself had become mad, and the sentences of the 
Star Chamber or the Chancery kept alight the fires 
of Smithfield, and caused the rivulets of Tower Hill 
to stream with noble, and often with innocent, blood. 
Skelton, had he lived longer, could scarcely have 
escaped the fury of his former pupil. At the time that 
his sarcasms were levelled against AVolsey, the King 
had begun to be jealous of his Minister, and Warham, 
Archbishop of Canterbur}^ had remonstrated against 
the oppressive demands made on the clergy by the 
Chancellor. Skelton died in the refuge where he 
had sought safety, and it is conjectured that the 
King had granted him some small stipend, or per- 
mitted him to receive some emolument from his 
rectorate, a mark of consideration which would have 
scarcely been accorded him had his Majesty's old 
tutor hved long enough to differ from him on points 
of doctrine, or to deny his supremacy. 



CHAPTER YI. 

POETS AND PRIXTERS IX FLEET STREET. 

FalstaS and his Companions in the Fleet Prison — Sir Thomas "Wyatt 
—Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey— The Xew Poetry— The Ballade, 
the Sonnet, and the Rondeau — Wyatt in Prison— Surrey's Frisk 
in the City— He is sent to the Fleet — Wyatt's Death— Surrey's 
Sentence and Execution — The Seymours — The Howards — Tottell, 
of Fleet Street, prints the Xew Poetry — John Jaggard — Joel 
Stephens — Shakespeare at the " Hand and Star " — Successors of 
Caxton in the Highway of Letters — Early Printing and PulDlish- 
ing Stationers — The Stationers' Company — Printing the Bible — 
Tyndal— :\Iiles Coverdale— Cranmer— The :\latthew Bible— The 
"Great" Bible — The ''Bishop's" Bible — Printing in France — 
Whitchurch and Grafton in Fleet Street — Grafton in the Fleet 
Prison — Early Printed Books. 

The mention by Skelton of tlie odious and utterly 
unconstitutional secret court of the Star Chamber, 
and bis reference to the number of prisoners, may 
remind us that tbe royal prison, called the Fleet, 
still frowned sullenly on tbe stream from wbicb it 
took its name, and by wbicb jDrisoners were conveyed 
in a boat to tbe river entrance — the AVater-gate — 
of a building to enter wbicb was too often to leave 
bope behind. But the gate — which resembled the 
Traitors' Gate of tbe Tower of London — led to what 
was afterwards called "the Common Side," where 
prisoners were confined for misdemeanours, or 
offences not amounting to serious crimes or to 
treasonable actions. 

Shakespeare makes the Judge Gascoine order 
Falstaff and his companions to be taken to tbe Fleet, 



112 TEE HIGHWAY OF LET TEES. [Yl. 

when the fat knight, with Shallow, Pistol and Bar- 
dolj)h, had assembled at Westminster to see Henry 
the Fifth return from his coronation at the Abbey. 
As they Avere only sent to await the further com- 
mands of the judge, part of the prison was probably 
used even at that time as a place of detention. 

Among the most gifted and the most brilliant 
of the courtly throng who, in the days of Henry the 
Eighth, made a splendour in Fleet Street, when a 
royal procession or a pageant passed from St. Paul's 
to AATiitehall, or when the Court and Council were 
held at the Palace of Bridewell," there were none 
more conspicuous than Sir Thomas Wyatt and his 
son, and the young Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, 
and son of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. The 
elder Wyatt and the younger Howard were famous in 
the world of letters, and their names still live as the 
introducers of a new style of poetry — the chieftains 
of a new company of courtly "makers." They had 
both been in Italy, where they had imbibed the 
'' sweet and stately measures and style of the Italian 
poetry. As novices newly crept out of the schools of 
Dante, Ariosto and Petrarch, they greatly polished 
our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesy (the 
poesy of the common language) from that it had been 
before." 

Wyatt was a diplomatist, and was entrusted by 
the King with an embassy to Spain, during the critical 
time of the contention between Henry and the Em- 
peror Charles concerning the divorce of Catherine. 
He also attended the Emperor as English Ambassador 



VI.] SIB THOMAS WYATT. 113 

Extraordinary during his journey in France and the 
Netherlands. His address and astuteness were as 
conspicuous as his great abilities and accompHsh- 
ments in arts and arms ; and his handsome presence 
accentuated those attainments which made him, at 
the age of five-and- 
twenty, so attract- 
ive that he was in 
continued favour 
with the King, ex- 
cept for a short 
period after his 
return from Ghent, 
when his sympathy 
with the Keform- 
ers, and his liberal 
views, were not in 
accordance with the 
changed attitude of 
Henry, which had occasioned the disgrace and exe- 
cution of Thomas Cromwell, the successor of Wolsey. 
Wyatt had been a friend, not only of Cromwell, 
whose energy in carrying out the King's determina- 
tion to dissolve the " religious houses " he doubtless 
admired, but of Keginald Pole, whose bold opposition 
to the divorce of Catherine and the repudiation of 
the Pope's supremacy, not only deprived him of the 
royal pension and of his valuable Church preferments, 
but compelled him to leave England. The bitter 
animosity of Henry was continued to all the family 
of Pole, whom the Pope had received and made a 




SIR THOMAS WYATT. (After a portrait by 
HoJhein.) 



114 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [YI. 

Cardinal. Even the aged mother, the Countess of 
Sahsbuiy, was sent to prison on a charge of treason, 
and, after two years of close confinement, was sen- 
tenced to execution. 

It was on a charge of disrespect to the King and 
traitorous correspondence with Pole that Wyatt was 
sent to the Tower, but he Avas there only for a few 
months, and was not only acquitted, but restored to 
the favour of Henry, who conferred upon him a 
grant of land in Lambeth, in addition to his own 
estate at Allington, and the adjoining house, former!}^ 
belonging to the friars, at Ailesford, in Kent, bestowed 
on him by Henry while he was on his embassy to 
Spain. 

Wyatt's writings were numerous, and he wrote 
not only poetry, but prose, with variety and grace, 
but yet occasionally with a vigour and sedateness of 
style which befitted his more serious temperament. 
His young friend the Earl of Surrey might well 
have said of his letters, translations, and poems, as 
he said of his stately form — that there "strength 
and beauty met." His religious poems, paraphrases, 
and translations, and, indeed, most of his prose, like 
that of the other writers of the time, except those 
who dealt with theological subjects, are less known 
than the ballads, songs, and sonnets, which are not 
unfamiliar to modern readers. Perhaps the best 
known are that pensive love-song, beginning, " Blame 
not my lute," and some of the short pieces which 
maintain a certain decisive or leading idea — such as 
" The Courtier's Life." 



VI.] HOWARD, EAEL OF SUEREY. 115 

Surrey was some thirteen years younger than 
Wyatt, but had held the office of Cup-bearer to the 
Kinof when he was thirteen, and carried a state sword 
before Henry at the coronation of Anne Bole^Ti, 
when Wyatt served as "ewerer." He not only 
brought into fashion the ballade, the sonnet, and 
the rondeau; but he has also the credit of bemg 
the first Enoiish writer in blank verse — the versi 
sciolti — or fi'ee (um*hymed) verse of Tuscan poets, 
which was then m fashion in Italy. In this form 
the first and fourth books of the .Eneid had been 
translated into Itahan : and Sun*ey translated the 
saroe two books into Enghsh. His poems, bright, 
tender, and with a certain easy flow and facihty of 
expression, are less thoughtful than those of Wyatt ; 
but they show an advance in style and expression, 
which perhaps more completely assimilates them to 
modem forms of versification. 

Wyatt was but thirty-five when he died of a 
fever, caused by riding in inclement Aveather and with 
great haste to Falmouth, to meet the ambassador 
fi'om Charles Y., and bring him to London. It would 
seem that the young Earl of SuiTey (he was only 
twenty-two at Wyatt's death) looked up to his older 
friend as an example, not only of high attainments 
but of vh'tuous and noble character, as may be seen 
from the plaintive elegy in Avhich he mourns his loss. 
Surrey, who had succeeded to the earldom when he 
was seven years old, on the succession of his father 
to the dukedom of Norfolk, had in his character 
much of the hvehness, and even some of the rackety 
I 2 



116 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTEBS. [YI. 

disposition, common to the young nobility who from 
childhood had been attached to a lively Court. He 
was married in 1535, at the age of eighteen, to the 
Lady Frances Yere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford, 
and in 1542 was made a Knight of the Garter, a 
distinction which may or may not have had some 
eftect in inciting him to quarrel with, and send a 
challenge to, a gentleman of Middlesex. For this 
offence he was sent to the Fleet Prison, which he 
truly described as " a noisome place, with a pestilent 
atmosphere." 

This was in July, 1542, and he had, in fact, about 
a month's imprisonment for an act which, in his 
defence, he ascribed to " the fury of reckless youth." 
On his liberation he joined his father, who, by 
Henry's command, was about to cross the border 
to attack the Scots. 

In April, the next year, we find Henry Howard 
again, not only in Fleet Street, but in the Fleet 
Prison. It is scarcely credible, but is nevertheless 
true, that this young blood — already famous in arms 
and letters, and who had but just written an elegy 
on his late friend and counsellor, the virtuous Wyatt — 
had been, in company with Wyatt's son and another 
companion, for a frisk in the City, where they seem 
to have manifested a reckless disregard of law and 
order, by misdemeanours similar to those with which 
Londoners were familiar in the early part of the 
present century. 

They did not, that we know of, wrench off 
knockers, but they may have played havoc with 



YL] SURREY IJSF THE FLEET PRISON. 117 

the signboards that then distinguished almost every 
shop, and the charge brought against them by the Lord 
Mayor and civic officers was that they went about 
the streets at midnight in manner unseemly, break- 
the windows of the citizens with " stone-bows," which 
probably were the early editions of our present 
" catapults." Rioting in the City was quite as serious 
a matter then as it is now, but unlike modern aristo- 
cratic roysterers, these young men were not let off 
with a fine — at any rate, the Earl of Surrey was 
not. He was summoned before the Privy Council, 
for he was a Peer, and was consigned to the " noisome 
place," where he seems to have had a rather longer 
durance than on his first imprisonment there ; though, 
in a few Imes of quaint satirical verse, he recorded 
that his object in waking the City sluggards was 
to alarm sinners with whom ordinary precept and 
preaching had been tried in vain. 

Alas! these experiences of a prison were but the 
lighter shadows of that dark cloud which was 
settling down upon the house of Howard. The 
Seymours, their implacable enemies, were rising 
to power. The uncle of the prince who was to 
succeed Henry on the throne was of more import- 
ance than the uncle of Anne Boleyn and Catherine 
Howard. Seymour was created Earl of Hertford, and 
placed in command at Boulogne, in place of Surrey, 
who was recalled. The impetuous and indiscreet 
poet spoke angry words, which could not be recalled, 
and was sent as a prisoner to Windsor. It was the 
beginning of the end, for at the close of the same 



118 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



[VI. 



year, both Surrey and his father were committed^ 
not to the Fleet, but to the Tower — the father by 
water, the young Earl by land. For the last time the 
brilliant poet appeared in Fleet Street, on his last 
Journey, except that from his prison to the hill just 

outside its wall. 
Almost the last 
judicial act of the 
dying King was to 
stamp the death- 
warrant with his 
signature, for he 
was too ill to 
^vrite, and his sign 
manual was carved 
on a stamp. On 
the 21st of Janu- 
ary, 1547, the fair 
head of Henry 
Howard was severed from his comely body by the exe- 
cutioner. His father, Norfolk, a man whose base 
truckling to the ferocious King had equalled that of 
Seymour himself, survived as a prisoner in the Tower, 
only because the signing of his death-warrant was 
delayed, and the King himself had passed beyond the 
vain shadows of pride and power. 

It was not till ten years after Henry's death that the 
poems of Wyatt and Surrey were printed and pubhshed 
together by Richard Tottell, at the sign of the Hand 
and Star, within Temple Bar, in Fleet Street. Tottell 
became printer, by special patents, of the books of 




HENEY HOWARD, EARL OF SUEEET, 
JIolkuK) 



{After 



TI.] AT THE HAND AND STAB. 119 

common-law in the several reigns of Edward TI., 
Mary, and Elizabeth, and his successors were, re- 
spectively, John Jaggard, in the reign of James I., 
and Joel Stephens, in the reign of George I., each 
of vrhom used the same sign of the Hand and Star, 
and lived on the same spot as that now occupied by 
Mr. Joshua Whitehead Butterworth, who succeeded 
to the ownership of the house and business which 
came into the possession of his family in the last 
century. Mr. Butterworth still holds the original 
leases of the same house — No. 7, Fleet Street — which 
existed in the time of Eichard Tottell, the only modern 
addition being the half-brick front, which was placed 
there more than a hundred years ago. Jaggard, who 
succeeded Tottell, issued the first printed edition of 
Romeo and Juliet, and his printing house was in 
the rear, the premises now occupied as Dick's coffee- 
house. There is some probability that Shakespeare 
often called at the Hand and Star to correct the 
proof sheets of the immortal play ; and Mr. Butter- 
worth, by whose family the house was restored to 
law publishing, became the Queen's law pubhsher, 
and embellished his books Avith the original colophon 
used by Tottell. 

The successors of Caxton, nameh^ AVynkyn de 
Worde, Pynson, Machhnia (or William of Mechlin), 
who were in Caxton's service, had settled in Fleet 
Street, and Wynkyn de AVorde became one of the 
first members of the Stationers' Company. They, 
as well as Thomas Hunt, all printed books before 
and after Caxton's death, but Tottell, of the Hand 



120 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [TI. 

and Star, and Eastell, of the Star, were soon after- 
wards also bus}^ in Fleet Street, though the number 
of books issued was small, and increased very 
gradually. 

In other parts of London, at St. Alban's, and in 
other places, printing presses were set up, and books 
had been printed at Oxford as early as 1478 ; but 
the world of letters at that time had comparatively 
few accessions, though much controversial matter and 
many theological and polemical treatises had been 
written. 

As we have seen, the productions of the more 
distinguished writers were known, but they were not 
printed for several years afterwards. Caxton in his 
day had announced that the books which he put 
forth (some of them written or translated by him- 
self) were not for the unlearned or for common 
wits ; but the long list of works which he published 
contained few of an essentially erudite or profound 
order. Though most of them were either of a de- 
votional or of a romantic character, and Avere doubt- 
less intended for the larger class of readers represented 
by the Church and the nobility, there was no neglect 
of books of what may be called a popular character, 
that is to say, such as would be sought for by 
those whose imagination and intelhgence had been 
quickened by the opportunities for learning which 
had reached the higher class of traders and artificers. 

That Caxton should have printed the statutes of 
the first year of the reign of Kichard III. and of the 
first second, and third Parliament of Henry YIL, is 



YI.] 



FEINTING IN FLEET STREET. 



121 



suggestive ; but more important to the general read- 
ing public of that time, and to the world of letters, 
was the issue of the poems of Chaucer — "The Tales 
of Canterbury," which ran to two editions, " The Book 
of Fame," " Troylus and Cresseide/' and some minor 




PLAN OF FLEET STEEET IN 1563. 



poems; the '' Gonfessio Amantis" of Gower; Lyd- 
gate's " Court of Sapience," and some others. 

Caxton's successors seem to have followed much 
the same fashion ; but printers had become also book- 
sellers, the " stationers " dealing not alone in the 
works which they printed, but in other books pro- 
duced in England or abroad. Still the demand for 
the new books was not great. Nor did the subsequent 
incorporation of the Stationers' Company by Philip 



122 th:e highway of letters. [YI. 

and Mary mucli aid the diffusion of learning. The 
purpose of that incorporation appears to have been to 
impose restrictions on printers and publishers, by for- 
bidding the issue of any books which bigoted censors 
pronounced to be heretical in expression or tendency. 
It was again made heresy to deny the Papal 
supremacy ; to suggest the right of private judgment ; 
or to claim the privilege of reading the Scriptures, 
though this last had been conceded before the 
death of Henry, and all had been confirmed by the 
Keformation, which Avas endorsed by the leaders of 
the Government of Edward YI. 

There had been comparatively little of what may 
be called secular hterature printed in the time of 
Henry YIIL, and the publication of controversial 
matter, either pohtical or theological, would have 
endangered not only the books, which would prob- 
ably have been ordered to be burnt at Paul's Cross 
or in Fleet Street by the common executioner, but 
would also have placed authors and printers in peril 
of fine, imprisonment, or the stake. 

To burn heretical and seditious writings, or printed 
treatises and tracts, condemned by the censors, was 
an important part of the business of the common 
executioner, and had been the custom for some 
generations ; but, unhappily, ever since the adoption 
of the stake, the torture chamber, and the gibbet as 
remedies for doctrinal differences, the authors had 
frequently been burnt also. For this reason men of 
strong convictions, Avho Avere inclined to the tenets 
of the Reformation, found it so perilous to remain 



YJ.] STRUGGLES FOB A FREE PRESS. 123 

in England after having declared their opinions, 
either by speech or by writing, that many sought 
refuge in Holland and Germany, and were protected 
and encouraged by English merchants settled there. 

Among these refugees was William Tyndal, a 
learned canon of the then new foundation of Christ 
Church, Oxford, who with others had left Eng- 
land to seek on the Continent not only freedom to 
express his opinions, but a free press by which to dis- 
seminate them. 

Numerous tracts advocating the Reformation doc- 
trines had been brought over to this country from 
Antwerp and Hamburg, printed in Latin and Eng- 
lish, and among them was one little book by Tyndal, 
in which, with much plainness, was discussed the 
question of the lawfulness of the King's divorce. 
But Tyndal had done far more than this. Assisted 
by John Fry (or Fryth) and William Roy, who were 
afterwards both put to death as heretics, he had, 
in 1526, completed a translation of the New Testa- 
ment, printed copies of which (the first printed trans- 
lation of any portion of the Scriptures in English) 
were secretly brought to this country. In this, at 
all events so far as the translation was concerned, 
Tyndal was assisted by the equally learned Miles 
Coverdale, who had been a Friar of the Augustines 
at Cambridge. The prior of the house of which 
Coverdale was one of the brethren, was the scholarly 
and open-minded Dr. Barnes, who promoted among 
the men of the colleges not only classical learning, 
but discussion of those tenets, the study of which 



124 TEE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [YI 

was exercising the minds of scholars of Hberal and 
progressive tendencies. 

Barnes also became a refugee, escaping to Ger- 
many, where he found friends among the leading 
Lutherans. He and Coverdale were associates, and 
Coverdale joined Tjrndal in the translation of the 
Scriptures. What share each of them took in the 
marginal comments and interpretations cannot be 
decided, but it is probable that these were at the 
time chiefly attributed to Tyndal ; and it is only fair 
to say that the condemnation of the translation to 
the flames may have been due more to the marginal 
references than to the text itself, though, even in the 
text, certain applications of the words of Scripture 
were incorporated in a manner for which there was 
little warrant in any version professing to be a pure 
translation. 

Opposition was at first manifested by an at- 
tempt to buy up all the copies for the purpose of 
burning them, the effect of which, of course, was 
to exhaust the first issue, and give not only oppor- 
tunity but funds for the production of another, and 
a carefully revised, edition. Then followed the de- 
claration of the high ecclesiastics and the Lord 
Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, against all translations 
of the Scriptures into English ; but Tyndal had 
already printed the Pentateuch in Hamburg, and, 
with Miles Coverdale, had prepared to translate the 
whole Bible. 

He was not suffered to live to achieve this 
work. Although he had protectors in the English 



VI.] PRINTING THE SCRIPTURES. 125 

Company of Merchant Adventurers and tlie friends 
of tlie Reformation at Antwerp, where he lived with 
one of the said merchants, but probably in seclusion, 
English influence at last secured his arrest in 1535, 
while his host was on a visit to one of the great 
annual fairs. After about a year's imprisonment, 
during which his fiiend and co-worker, Coverdale, 
continued the translation of the Bible, he was 
strangled, and his body was burnt at Vilvorde in 
1536. 

By that time Coverdale had finished his com- 
plete translation, and it was printed. Latimer was 
then noted, not only as a Reformer, but as a plain 
and popular preacher. He had been previously 
charged with heresy, and protected himself by sign- 
ing certain articles then proposed to him, but he ad- 
vocated the restoration of the liberty of reading the 
Holy Scriptures, and the King, recognising in him a 
valuable ally, as a preacher who was opposed to the 
supremacy of the Pope, made him his chaplain, gave 
him a rectorate, and when he was further charged 
with heretical preaching, and was excommunicated 
and imprisoned, interposed that he might be released, 
absolved, and reinstated. 

Latimer was made Bishop of Worcester. Thomas 
Cromwell, soon afterwards becoming Secretary of 
StatSj and himself acquainted with the translation of 
the New Testament by Erasmus, supported the 
majority of the convocation of bishops in the vote for 
an English Bible which might be read by the people. 
Coverdale's translation from the German and Latin 



126 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [YI. 

into English, pronounced to be faulty but free from 
heresies, was chosen at the instance of the King, who 
gave his rojsl licence. The Bible was printed, it is 
believed, in Zurich, and the first copies were brought 
into England in 1536, the 3"ear in which T3"ndal 
suffered. A new edition of Coverdale's Bible was 
printed in England in the following year, and at 
about the same time another complete English Bible, 
in folio, was published abroad. This was called the 
Matthew Bible, from the name of Thomas Matthew, 
who appeared as the translator, but Avho Avas really 
John Rogers, Chaplain to the English merchants at 
Antwerp. He had adopted all that had been jointly 
done by his friends Tyndal and Coverdale, and had 
carefully revised Coverdale's work, which had origin- 
ally been strictly formed on an examination of five 
separate translations. 

By the royal order, Coverdale's Bible had been 
circulated, and copies of the Scriptures in English 
and in Latin had been ordered to be placed in 
the churches, where they could be read by or to 
the common people. Even with another edition of 
Matthew's translation, carefully revised by a Reformer 
of Oxford, named Richard Tavemer, the number of 
copies did not supply the new demand, encouraged 
by the King, who perceived that his free circulation 
of the Scriptures would be a distinct disavowal of the 
papal supremacy, and by Thomas Cromwell — now 
Lord Privy Seal — who was promoting the progress of 
the Reformation. 

In April, 1540, appeared the folio known as 



YI.l POINTING THE GliEAT BIBLE. 127 

" Cronnveirs," or the " Great," Bible, and sometimes 
as " Cranmer's " Bible. It was a folio revision by 
Coverdale of his own and Tyndal's edition, under the 
supervision of Cranmer, and was collated with the 
Hebrew and Greek texts. This was the translation 
then appointed to be read in churches, and it re- 
mained as the authority till 1568. In that year, 
EHzabeth, desiring to institute a new translation, as a 
corrective to the Calvinistic and democratic notes and 
annotations of the " Geneva " Bible in favour among 
the Puritan Reformers in England and Scotland, en- 
trusted Archbishop Parker to convene a company of 
learned men and biblical scholars, to prepare a revised 
version. This has been called the " Bishop's " Bible, 
and was in general use in churches till it was super- 
seded by the new revised version of the Conference 
ordered by James I. 

This brief account of the issue of the Holy Scrip- 
tures in English is so directly associated with the 
Highway of Letters, that no apology need be offered 
for dwelling on such a great and important event. 
Cromwell's, or the Great, Bible was sent to Paris to be 
printed — by permission of the French King — for the 
type used there was exceedingly clear and perfect ; 
but the care of the printing was entrusted to Richard 
Grafton and Edward Whitchurch, printers, in Fleet 
Street. They were, however, prevented from com- 
pleting their work by the French clergy, who seized 
and burnt nearly the whole impression, and the 
printing had, therefore, to be completed in London. 

Richard Grafton was a printer under the patronage 



128 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [YI. 

of Thomas Cromwell, and, therefore, of the King. 
His colleague, Whitchurch, had set up in business in 
Wynk}Ti de Worde's old house, " The Sun,"^ T\'here he 
pubUshed Erasmus's paraphrase ; and it is said that in 
the days following 'the persecutions he married the 
widow of the martyred Cranmer. 

Grafton suffered by the death of his patron, 
Cromwell, and by the relapse when the King again 
temporarily forbade the dissemination of the Scrip- 
tures ; for it is recorded that he was committed to the 
Fleet Prison, for offending in this respect, or for 
printing the Bible, or portions of it, without authority ; 
but he emerged fi-om this trouble, and became printer 
to Edward YL, with a press at the Gray Friars, the 
foundation of Christ's Hospital in Newgate Street. 

Pynson, the companion of Wynkjm de Worde in 
the service of Caxton, was among the most suc- 
cessful of the earhest printers in Fleet Street, and 
his " Dives and Pauper " (1483) was probably the 
first book printed there, as his edition of Terence 
(1497) was the first of the Latin classics printed in 
England. It was after his appointment as printer to 
Henry YIII. that he published the Chronicles of 
Froissart and Fabyan, and altogether he is credited 
with the printing and publishing of no fewer than 
215 works. 

* "WjTikyn de Worde seems to have removed to "Tlie Falcon," 
over Falcon Court. 



CHAPTER YIL 

THE DISPERSION OF LIBRARIES. 

Valuable MSS. — The Accumulation of Rare Copies — Benefactors to 
Letters — The Slow Growth of Printing — Obligations of Book 
Borrowers — A Bishop's Warning — Oxford Library — Its Dis- 
persion by "Visitors" under Edward VL— Tiptoft's Contri- 
butions to Letters — Destruction of Abbeys and Churches by 
Thomas CromweU — Leland's "Itinerary" — Hall's "Chronicle." 

If it should seem strange that only a very small 
proportion of the books in existence before the intro- 
duction of printing should have been re-pubhshed, even 
when the art was thoroughly established, we must 
remember that there were comparatively few readers, 
and still fewer persons who could afford to buy books. 
Though a vast number of beautiful and costly manu- 
scripts, including copies of poems, travels, histories, 
legends and chronicles, were accumulated in various 
parts of the country, they were mostly in the libraries 
of universities, colleges, abbeys, monasteries, cathedrals, 
and churches, or in institutions like the Temple and 
Inns of Law, or the halls of City Corporations. In 
some cases, wealthy and accomplished noblemen had 
libraries of considerable value, but some of these men 
were the benefactors of colleges and similar founda- 
tions, to which they presented or bequeathed their 
literary possessions. 

For several years after Caxton had sought to 
increase the number of general readers, by providing 
books for them, the Highway of Letters only very 



130 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. \yil. 

gradually developed into a highway where he who 
ran might read. At first the cost of some of the 
principal books, if printed, was little less than that of 
copies made by the pen of ready and skilful scribes. 
The possession of a printed work was in a sense a 
distinction ; and every library of importance still 
consisted chiefly of manuscripts, which were guarded 
with jealous care, none of them being lent, even to 
personages of the highest station, without a solemn 
obligation and a valuable deposit as a pledge or 
guarantee for their being returned uninjured. On a 
manuscript of Matthew Paris— now in the British 
Museum — there is an inscription in Latin, and with 
the signature of John Kussell, then Bishop of Lincoln, 
intimating that whosoever shall obliterate or destroy 
the Bishop's memorandum respecting the ownership 
of the volume, is solemnly declared to be accursed. 
This mode of impressing a borrower who might be 
tempted to become a stealer, seems to have survived, 
in a travestie or burlesque form, even to the present 
century, to judge from the doggrel inscriptions 
occasionally to be seen within the covers of old 
books. 

Perhaps the most conspicuous example ot a 
literary benefactor — of the period just before the 
introduction of printing — is Humphrey, Duke of 
Gloucester, one of the most munificent patrons of the 
world of letters, who established the famous library 
of the University of Oxford. Of the 600 volumes 
which he presented to it for its foundation, 120 were 
valued at £1,000 — a very large sum in those days. 



YII.] JOHN TIPTOFT. 131 

They were the most splendid and perfect copies that 
could be procured, exquisitely written on vellum, and 
elegantly embellished with miniatures and illumina- 
tions. Warton, in his remarks on the library, in his 
"Dissertation on the Introduction of Learning into 
England," tells us what became of this sumptuous 
collection. Only a single specimen volume was 
suffered to remain. It is a beautiful manuscript, 
in folio, of Valerius Maximus, enriched with the 
most elegant decorations. "All the rest of the 
books — which, like this, being highly ornamented, 
looked like Missals, and conveyed ideas of Popish 
superstition — were destroyed or removed by the pious 
visitors of the University in the reign of Edward VI., 
whose zeal was equalled only by their ignorance, or, 
perhaps, by their avarice." Several of the volumes of 
Duke Humphrey's library, however, remain in various 
collections, so that probably many of the Oxford 
manuscripts were dispersed rather than destroyed. 

The next famous contributor to the promotion of 
learning, by the same means, was John Tiptoft, who 
was made Earl of Worcester by Henry VI., and was 
sent to execution by Warwick, under the pretext of 
his having been guilty of cruelty many years before, 
while he was Governor of Ireland. 

He was a man of great political and military 
ability, which may account for the determination of 
" the King-maker " to put him out of the way, and he 
was also an ardent scholar and admirer of books. 
His translation of Cicero's treatise on " Friendship " 
was published by Caxton, of whom he was one of the 
J 2 



132 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [YII. 

chief early patrons. Fuller, speaking of him as one of 
the " Worthies," said that, at his death, " the axe then 
did, at one blow, cut off more learning than was left 
in the heads of all the surviving nobility." Tiptoft 
was buried in the monastery of Blackfriars. 

Speaking of the visitation and dispersion of the 
libraries in the reign of Edward YL, reminds us that 
at the time when the great EngHsh Bible was ordered 
by Henry VIII. to be placed in the churches, and the 
supremacy of the " Bishop of Rome " over the Eng- 
lish Church was denounced by the King, Thomas 
Cromwell, Earl of Essex, was at the height of his 
power. In obedience to the King's command, no 
less than in accordance mth his own creed and policy, 
he had organised a powerful commission, entrusted 
with the tremendous oflfice of suppressing and dis- 
solving the religious houses of the land. 

It happens sometimes, by a strange misconception, 
that the demolitions effected by the agents of Thomas 
Cromwell are attributed to the professed followers of 
Oliver Cromwell, the Protector of the Commonwealth. 
It may, however, be safely affirmed that less mischief 
was done to churches in which the fanatic troops 
of the Puritan army were said to have stabled their 
horses, and in which they wrecked the altars, and 
broke the images and the stained glass windows, than 
had been previously accomplished in buildings for 
ages regarded as sacred edifices, destroyed by order 
of a Sovereign who sent people to be burnt for 
denying the Real Presence in the Eucharist; and 
who afterwards re-imposed frightful penalties for 



YII.] LELANP8 WORK. 133 

those accused of disbelief in articles of faitli wliich 
the Reformers could not honestly accept. 

There was one man engaged in quietly visiting 
and minutely recording the history and condition of 
the antiquities of the buildings and monuments of 
the kingdom during the years from 1536 to 1542, who, 
though an advocate of a reformation in the Church, 
deeply lamented the destruction of edifices, and 
the raid made upon almost priceless Hbraries of 
monasteries, where he used successful efforts to pre- 
serve some of the books, and remit them to places 
of security. This was John Leland, who was born in 
London, and who was one of the boys of St. Paul's 
School, under the mastership of WiUiam Lily. He 
was one of the earHest Greek scholars in England, and 
was acquainted, not only with the French, ItaHan, and 
Spanish, but with the Welsh and Saxon languages. 
Henry made him his librarian, and appointed him to 
be one of his chaplains, giving him the rectory of 
Po^^peling, in the marches of Calais, but, with a keen 
eye to the value of those antiquarian pursuits to 
which Leland was attached, allo^\T.ng him to employ a 
curate, and to remain in England. Leland devoted 
himself for six years to travelling by Royal Com- 
mission to every part of the kingdom, and, with the 
title of " The King's Antiquaiy," making a record of 
every tOTsm, city, and village — their situations and 
natural advantages, their buildings, inhabitants, and 
chief occupations, and especially their castles, churches, 
monasteries, and important buildings. Of these he 
minutely described the architecture, possessions, 



134 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [Yll. 

libraries (whicli he catalogued with painstaking care), 
and all the antiquities necessary to make a complete 
account. This he afterwards compiled, in various 
works, but more completely in his famous " Itinerary," 
which contains a record of his travels, and an account 
of the ancient monuments and buildings which he 
visited. 

Leland, who was a friend of Sir Thomas Wyatt the 
elder, and wrote an elegy on his death, lived till 
1552, but during his last two years was insane. The 
disorder may have been partly attributable to mental 
disturbance caused by the destruction of buildings and 
objects which he regarded as valuable national posses- 
sions. He was buried in the church of St. Michael le 
Querne, at the eastern end of Paternoster Kow. 

Most students of antiquities are acquainted with 
Leland's Itinerary, if not with his other works. It may 
also be said that no one can well study the national 
chronicles without being familiar with the name of 
Edward Hall, the successor of Fabyan. Hall was an 
Oxford and a Cambridge scholar, and was a student at 
Gray's Inn, where he was called to the bar. He after- 
wards was appointed " Common Seijeant " to the City, 
and became a judge in the sheriffs court. His 
" Chronicle," entitled the " Union of the two Noble and 
Illustre Families of Lancaster and Yorke," is, so to 
speak, a slice of history which he did not properly 
round off, for it extended only to the year 1532. It 
was Eichard Grafton, the printer, of Fleet Street, who 
printed and published it in 1548, having completed 
the work by bringing it up to date. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE ECLIPSE OF LETTERS. 

The Boy "King in the Highway of Letters— His Learning— Sir John 
Cheke — Eoger Ascham — Bishop Gardiner — Sir Humphrey "Wing- 
field— The Book and the Bow— ItaHan Tales— The King's 
Journal — L^Daldini — Bonner and Gardiner in the Fleet — The 
Grey Friars— A Palace converted to a Eeformatory — Foundation 
of Christ's Hospital — '•' Blue Coat Boys " who walked in the 
Highway of Letters — Bishop Hooper in the Fleet — Queen Mary 
in Fleet Street— "Wyatt's Eehellion— Persecutions— The Charter 
of the Stationers' Company — Suppression of Free Printing — 
Elizabeth and the Stationers— Fox— " The Acts and Monu- 
ments" — Day, the Printer— Oporinus— Grub Street. 

Ox the 24th of February, 1547, the 
young Prince Edward, who had been 
brought, as he hhnseK says in his 
journal, from Hertford — but as Hohngs- 
hed and other chroniclers who have 
followed him say, from Hatfield — set 
forth from the Tower to ride through 
Fleet Street to Westminster for his coro- 
nation. 

There was now some hope that 
there would be more security for the 
lives and fortunes of those who foUowed 
the Reformed opinions, which had made 
more progTess in the City of London 
than m most other places. The dark 
cloud that had rested on the land, 
and especially on London, during the later days of 




PEEACHEE S 
HOUE- GLASS. 



136 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [YIII. 

Henry, was about to be lifted. There was some 
prospect that executions at the end of Fetter Lane, 
burnings in Smithfield, and hangings at Tyburn 
would be stayed ; and though many of the people 
had been brutalised by the cruelties which they had 
witnessed during the persecutions, the religious and 
political outlook was brightening. 

The royal boy, who was the ward of his uncle 
Seymour, Duke of Somerset, rode amidst a splendid 
and noble company through streets sumptuously 
adorned, and wherein elaborate pageants made a 
splendid and picturesque show. 

One touch of nature — of boy-nature — is recorded 
of him by the chronicler, who says : " At St. Paul's his 
Majesty was particularly diverted by a Spaniard, who 
slid down a rope, head-foremost, on his breast, from 
the battlements of St. Paul's steeple to the Dean's 
gate in the churchyard." There are few other re- 
corded instances — though there are some — in which 
the lad exhibited sudden and natural youthful 
emotion. It was seldom that the royal boy, pre- 
maturely trained, both in learning and m royalty, 
forgot to act and speak as though he was expected to 
be " gTown-up " before his time. 

Even when we have been accustomed to admire 
the sedate, religious character of the young King, and 
his evident desire to do good and to promote charitable 
work, we lament his restricted, almost joyless, child- 
hood, his feeble constitution and early death. He 
seems to have given the w^hole force of his character 
to sustain his sense of consistency. There appears to 



YIII. 



EDWAED VL'S CRILDEOOD. 



137 



have been little evidence of youtliful warmth of aft'ec- 
tion or of tender sentiment in his disposition; nor 

was his education such as to promote either. His 



■^ 




CHEAPSrOE CE0S5 Ds* 1547. SHO^nOCG PAET OF THE PEOCESSION OF 

EDWABD VI, TO HIS C0E0>'ATI0N. {Froin o. coutein porary painting .) 



childhood had been passed in comparative seclusion. 
By what must have been a kind of forcing process, his 
acqturements had been various and considerable. 
Not only his half-sister, Elizabeth, but Lady Jane Grey, 

had to some extent shared his studies. His 
equals, if not his superiors, in learning, they were 



138 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [Ylll. 

apparently taught by the same masters — Sir John 
Cheke and Koger Ascham. 

Sir John Cheke — he was Master Cheke when he 
became tutor to the prince — was professor of Greek at 
Cambridge, and wa a man famous for learning, and 
especially for the introduction of an improved pro- 
nunciation of the Greek language, for which he was 
assailed with no Httle acrimony by Bishop Gardiner. 
He had devised a plan for removing from the Enghsh 
language all words not derived from Saxon roots, 
and left several works illustrating this proposition, 
including a translation of the Gospel of St. Matthew. 
He also contemplated a reform in spelling, which 
would, perhaps, in that day have been of no little 
advantage. 

Whether Gardiner^s opposition to the Greek pro- 
nunciation caused him, in the following reign, to 
include Cheke among those threatened with persecu- 
tion for their advanced Protestantism, cannot be 
known; but Cheke recanted in terror of the stake, 
and, it is said, died of remorse for having done so. 

Roger Ascham was the University orator at Cam- 
bridge, and, though he was a Protestant, was Latin 
Secretary to Mary and afterwards to Elizabeth. A 
master of style in that age, he wrote so simply and 
forcibly on the subject of education that his "School- 
master" may be profitably read by teachers of the 
present day. This book was not published till after 
his death, in the reign of Elizabeth. 

Roger Ascham was one of the men whose footsteps 
lingered in Fleet Street when he was not engaged at 



VITI] THE BOW AND THE BOOK. 139 

Cambridge, where he succeeded Cheke as Pubhc 
Orator. He was a great advocate for instruction in 
the use of the bow, among other healthful sports, as a 
relief from study, and the second part of his " School- 
master," entitled "Toxophilus," is chiefly devoted to 
the subject of archery, and is a pleasant book, for it 
is full of a kind of scholarly gossip. He wrote in 
English instead of in Latin, as he desired to be read 
by the gentlemen and yeomen of England. He had 
been educated, with other children, in the house of 
Sir Humphrey Wingfield, who taught the boys well, 
and included good shooting in the instruction by 
which he expected them to profit. "Would to God," 
says Ascham, in his quaint way, " would to God all 
England had used, or would use, to lay the foundation 
of youth after the example of this worshipful man in 
bringing up children in the book and the bow,* by 
which two things the whole commonwealth, both in 
peace and war, is chiefly valid and defended withal." 
The same healthy tone of mind caused Ascham to 
oppose "the manners and doctrine our Englishmen 
fetch out of Italy" — a remark probably caused by 
the influence on English minds of Boccaccio's "De- 
cameron" and other Italian tales of corrupt and 
hcentious character ; some of the best of which, how- 
ever, suggested to Spenser and Shakespeare much of 
their immortal verse. 

Edward, who had been chiefly trained in the 
Protestant doctrines by the Protector and those 
employed about the prince, was, as he himself wrote 
in his Journal, brought up till he was near six 



140 TEE EIGEWAY OF LETTERS. [YIIl. 

years old among women. The formal etiquette 
witli wliicli his governors caused him to be treated, 
and the self-consequence which was the substitute 




LATnEEE PEEACHi2fG BEroEE ED"S7AED VI. {From a xcoodci'.t in Fox's 
'' JIartyrs,'' 1563.) 



they offered him in place of authority, was another 
unhealthy element in his education. " I have seen," 
said Ubaldini, "the Princess Ehzabeth drop on one 
knee five times before her brother ere she took her 
place." At dinner, if either of his sisters was per- 
mitted to eat with him, she sat on a stool and cushion, 
at a distance beyond the limits of the royal dais. 
Even the lords and gentlemen who brought in the 
dishes before dinner knelt down before they placed 
them on the table. 

The phj'sical constitution of Edward YI, was not 



VIII.] OABDANO'S PORTRAIT OF EDWARD. 141 

such as to bear the enforced study and the seclusion 
to which he was subjected in childhood. He was 
little more than a child when he was called upon by 
those Avho surrounded him to sanction, in the name 
of the Reformation, persecutions to the death, not 
against the Roman Catholics, but against those who, 
claiming liberty of conscience, differed from the 
Protestant doctrines as to baptism or other tenets, 
and were sent to the stake for refusing to conform. 

In one instance, at all events, the young King ex- 
hibited some emotion when he was asked to sign the 
warrant for burning a poor woman who held heretical 
opinions, contrary alike to the Roman and the 
Reformed faith. He refused at first, but when 
pressed to do so, burst into a passion of angry tears, 
and told Cranmer that if the act was a sinful one it 
was he, the archbishop, who would be answerable 
for it to God, as it was by compulsion that the royal 
signature was affixed to the warrant. 

This is the best thing — because the most natural 
and youthfully sensitive thing — recorded of him. 
Mostly, we find accounts only of the demure precision 
and of the self-consciousness which such a training as 
his would develop. The Milanese physician, Cardano, 
who visited England in the last year of Edward's 
reign, thought he observed a look in the boy's face 
which presaged an early death. From him we learn 
that the young King was in stature below the usual 
height of lads of fifteen or sixteen ; his complexion 
was fair, his eyes grey, his gesture and general aspect 
sedate and becoming. He seems to have possessed 



142 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [YIII. 

much of the Tudor dignity, and not unfrequently rose 
to the self-assertion which characterised the family. 
When the active promotion of the reform of religion 
was carried on, the Bishops Bonner and Gardiner were 
consigned to the Fleet Prison, where the latter had to 
lie on a little pad of damp straw for a bed. Neither 
of them could appear in Parliament, and they were 
only released by the act of general pardon passed at 
the end of the session. 

The funds that were to be obtained from the 
suppression of the chantries were to be devoted to 
erecting grammar schools, for educating youth in 
virtue and godhness, further augmenting the 
universities, and making better provision for the 
poor and needy. Cranmer and other bishops were 
opposed to the diversion of the property of the 
chantries to the crown. Probably they knew, as most 
people may have suspected, that it would go in the 
main to the noble lords who were left executors to 
Henry's will, and it was by them and their com- 
panions, who hoped for a share, that the measure 
was proposed. 

The number of those who would now be called 
" the unemployed " had, from various causes, been 
vastly augmented, and especially after the suppression 
of monasteries and religious houses, which were often 
surrounded by dependents. The merciless vagrancy 
law against mendicants and idle or masterless people, 
which had been previously enacted, and which the 
young King in his Journal designates " an extreme 
law," had practically renewed slavery in England, for 



YIII.] GHEISTS HOSPITAL. 143 

persons living idlingiy or loiteringly for the space of 
three days could be taken before a justice of the 
peace, branded as vagabonds, and made over to the 
persons informing against them, to be their slaves for 
two years, living on bread and water, or " small 
drink," and forced to work by beating, chaining, or 
otherwise. If they ran away before their time was 
up, they could be captured, and might be made slaves 
for life. If they ran away a third time, they were 
liable to be put to death as felons. The children of 
beggars could also be seized by anyone who chose to 
retain them as " apprentices," the boys till they were 
twenty-four, and the girls till they were twenty years 
of age. 

But there were some significant recognitions on 
the part of the young King of the duty of promoting 
education and making some provision for the poor 
wanderers of the streets. Those immediately affect- 
ing the locality in which we may ourselves be said to 
be wandering, were the establishment of the famous 
school of " Christ's Hospital/' on the foundation of the 
former Grey Friars' Church and monastery in New- 
gate Street, and the conversion of the great disused 
palace at Bridewell into a combined reformatory 
prison and refuge for the destitute. 

The hospitals for the sick and the insane — St. 
Bartholomew's and Bethlehem — were the two 
" Royal " hospitals already founded, and it had been 
the intention of Henry YIII. to appropriate the build- 
ing of the former Grey Friars, in Newgate Street, to 
the relief of the poor of the City. Edward expanded 



lU THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [YIII. 

the scheme by making it the foundation of a school, 
to estabhsh which wealthy City merchants and others 
subscribed the necessary funds. At first, however, the 
aged and infirm poor were also relieved there. The 
young King, stimulated by a sermon on charity 
preached by Bishop Kidley, at Westminster, deter- 
mined to seek the aid of the citizens to inaugurate 
some practical scheme of benevolence. 

This was in the last year of his reign, and he 
was so much affected by the sermon that, after the 
service in the chapel, he sent for the bishop, to speak 
with him privately in the gallery at Whitehall. 
Among young Edward's sterling virtues was that of 
applying what he heard to himself, and testing it by 
his own principles and practice ; so, after thanking 
the bishop for his discourse, he said, '' My lord, you 
willed such as are in authority to be careful thereof, 
and to devise some good order for the relief of the 
distressed ; wherein I think you mean me, for I am 
the first that must make answer to God for my negli- 
gence, if I should not be careful therein, knowing it 
to be the express command of Almighty God to have 
compassion of His poor and needy members, of whom 
we must make account unto Him. And surely, my 
lord, I am, before all things else, most willing to travail 
that way." 

He then asked the bishop to tell him immediately 
what he had considered to be the best way to carry 
out the suggestions made in the sermon, and Ridley 
replied that something might well be done for the 
poor in London, where the citizens were wise and were 



Till.] BRIDEWELL PALACE A W0EKH0U8E. 145 

doubtless also pitiful and merciful, so that they would 
willingly undertake any charitable enterprise that 
might be entrusted to them. 

Edward at once wrote a letter to the Lord Mayor, 
Sir Richard Dobbs, commanding him to call a meeting 
of his most trusty coun- 
sellors to consider the 
matter. On the follow- 
ing day, Bishop Ridley 
— who probably pos- 
sessed the customary 
discrimination of the 
clergy in regard to a 
good dinner — went to 
dine with the Lord 
Mayor, and afterwards 
met two of the alder- 
men and six common- 
ers of the City Council. 
No time was lost in 
sending a report to the 
King, that in any great scheme of charity three classes 
of the poor should be considered— the helpless poor, 
such as young fatherless children, the crippled, and 
the aged; thdse who had become poor by sickness, 
hurt, or disease ; and the thriftless and unruly, who 
had become poor by idleness and vice. 

Edward repHed that he would found three great 
hospitals, or houses of charity— one at the old royal 
manor house or palace of Bridewell, to be a workhouse 
and place of punishment for idle and vicious persons 




EDWARD VI. RECEIVING A BOOK FROM 

JOHN BALE. (From Bale's " Centuries 
of British Writers, 1548.") 



146 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [VIII. 

who had no means of living ; one a hospital for the sick 
and diseased poor, at the Ahuomy, formerly founded 
by the Prior of Bermondsey, and called the Almonry 
of St. Thomas, but suppressed by Henry VIII. ; and 
one for receiving fatherless and destitute children, 
and relieving the aged and infirm poor, at the old 
monastery of Grey Friars, in Newgate Street, there- 
after to be called Christ's Hospital. 

The citizens took up the matter in earnest, and 
such generous contributions were made to these 
" Koyal Hospitals," that, though the young King lived 
but a short time after signing the charters for the 
three charities, the old Grey Friars building was 
rapidly repaired, and 340 poor children went up with 
the governors to Whitehall to receive the Charters, 
which the Kmg signed in the presence of his Council ; 
after which he was heard to say, " Lord, I yield Thee 
most hearty thanks that Thou hast given me life thus 
long to finish this work to the glory of Thy Name." 

The children of the school wore the blue outer 
garments which were the usual dress of servitors in 
those days, when blue was the servant's colour. 
Though the treatment of the scholars was often harsh 
and cruel, and the fare coarse and scanty, the school 
soon became famous, and many distiii^guished Blue- 
coat boys became afterwards well known m the 
Highway of Letters. William Camden, the famous 
scholar and antiquary, who became Master of West- 
minster School, with Ben Jonson as a favourite pupil ; 
Bishop Stillingfleet ; Baker, the ecclesiastical his- 
torian ; Joshua Barnes, the famous Greek scholar 



VIIL] LAMB'S SCHOOL DAYS. 147 

and translator of Euripides and Homer ; the learned 
James Jurin, who was president of the College of 
Physicians; Markland, scholar and critic; Bishop 
Middle ton, and others, among whom those of most 
modern celebrity may be said to have been Kichard- 
son the novelist, Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, and Charles 
Lamb. 

Lamb, whose name is almost as intimately asso- 
ciated with Fleet Street as that of Samuel Johnson 
himself, gives, as all readers know, striking reminis- 
cences of Christ's Hospital at the end of the last 
century, and from the favourable, as well as the un- 
favourable, point of view, for he was sent there when 
he was by no means robust, and a somewhat shy, 
retiring, stammering child. The old rough, repressive, 
unfeeling notion that harsh discipline was necessary 
in the training of children, had survived in some of the 
pastors and masters even to those later days of which 
Lamb wrote in 1820. The school and hall had then 
been twice rebuilt, and the system of instruction was 
of a higher character, though there was bullying and 
cruelty among the boys, and the birch and the cane 
were in perpetual motion. 

Lamb's account of the harsh treatment of the 
boys is endorsed by Leigh Hunt, and also by Coleridge, 
who, when weeping at being left at the school, 
lonely, friendless, and forlorn, was told by Boyer, the 
head master, famous for his wigs and his deliberate 
method of caning, "Boy, the school is your father, 
the school is your mother, the school is your brother 
and sister and all your relations." AVas it not he of 
K 2 



148 TBE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [YIII. 

whom at his death it was said, by Coleridge, that 
it was fortunate the cherubim who carried him to 
heaven were composed of only heads and wings, or he 
would inevitably have flogged them by the way ? 

The building on the site of which the school was 
founded had long been traditional of civic munifi- 
cence, for, as we have seen, the famous Kichard 
Whittington, mercer and thrice Lord Mayor of 
London, had started the library of the house of the 
Grey Friars by contributing £400, a handsome sum in 
the year 1421. The works of this enlightened and 
wealthy man followed him, for not only did his 
executors, carrying out the provisions of his will, pay 
half the cost of building the library at Guildhall, but 
they repaired St. Bartholomew's Hospital, built the 
West Gate of the City, thereafter called New Gate, 
and founded Whittington College, which, with alms- 
houses for thirteen poor men, stood near Upper 
Thames Street, on a spot to which they gave the 
name of College Hill. The college and almshouses 
were removed to Highgate in 1808, the buildings 
being pulled down to provide a site for the Mercers' 
School. 

Though King Edward YI. gave his house at 
Bridewell and " seven hundred marks of land, late 
of the possession of the house of the Savoy," towards 
maintaining the house of correction in Bridewell, 
and the hospital of St. Thomas in Southwark, the 
aid of wealthy citizens was indispensable. It was 
afterwards found that the relief afforded at the 
latter place to indigent and idle or unemployed 



VIII.] 



BRIDEWELL IN AFTER YEARS. 



149 



persons, attracted such numbers of destitute, or pre- 
tendedly destitute, beggars from the country to 
Fleet Street, that the repellent conditions im- 
posed on applicants had to be supplemented by 
new regulations. The institution was maintained in 




GATEWAY OF ST. BAETHOLOMEW'S HOSPITAL, 1750. 



the once superb and spacious building till this was 
destroyed in the Great Fire, when another struc- 
ture was erected, and became famous, or infamous, 
in a later time, when the poems and dramas of 
the Restoration and of the early Georgian period 
contained various references to the character and 
punishment of some of its inmates. Even now — 
though probably not a vestige of the old palace^ 
and only a portion of the succeeding building, remains 



150 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [VIII. 

— there is, at all events, some survival of one of its 
original pro^dsions, that, to wit, for the incarceration 
of unnily and defiant City apprentices, who may be 
sent there by order of the City Chamberlain, and im- 
prisoned in one of the "dark rooms." The estab- 
lishment of the Royal Hospitals ma}^ be said to have 
been the last pubHc act of the young King, for he 
died about a month after signing the charters. The 
aspect of the government had greatly changed. The 
Earl of Warwick was in power, and was created Duke 
of Northumberland. Somerset had perished on Tower 
Hill, execrated by the people, who resented his arro- 
gant assumption, and particularly the display of it in 
building a lordly palace in the Strand, which was 
named Somerset House, in the construction of which 
it was declared that he had removed one church and 
taken stones and materials from others, and even 
from St. Paul's Cathedral itself. 

The young King was to have been married to 
Elizabeth, daughter of Henry of France. But the 
negotiations came to naught, and the last plot of 
his new governors was to mduce him to name by 
deed as his successor the gentle and amiable Lady 
Jane Grey, a plan which was devised by the con- 
spiring Councillors at Baynard's Castle, then in the 
possession of the Earl of Pembroke, in whose family 
it remained till after the accession of Elizabeth. 

The Duke of Norfolk was still a prisoner in the 
Tower when the death of the young King caused a 
reversal of all that had been done to promote the 
progress of the reformed doctrines and worship. 



YIII.] BISHOPS IX THE FLEET PRISON. 151 

Gardiner was there also; and Bonner was shut up 
in the Marshalsea Prison, in Southwark, which was, 
in most respects, Hke the Fleet. 

The punishment of bishops for contumacy had 
not been confined to those who persisted in hold- 
ing Koman Catholic tenets, for, after the release of 
Bonner and Gardiner, a celebrated preacher and 
staunch Protestant, John Hooper — who afterwards 
became an illustrious martyr for the faith which 
he proclaimed — was nominated to the See of Glou- 
cester ; but, holding views probably derived from 
his intercourse with the Reformers of France and 
Germany, refused to appear for consecration in 
canonical robes, and was by Royal warrant consigned 
to the Fleet Prison, that he might reflect on his 
obstinacy. After some time spent in that vile place, 
he came to a compromise — that he would wear the 
robes at his ordination and when he preached before 
the King or in Gloucester Cathedral, but on no other 
occasions. He was then set free, and his consecration 
followed in due course. 

The Highway of Letters, in the five years (fi'om 
1553 to 1558) that followed the death of Edward, 
provides few examples of the promotion or ex- 
tension of English Hterature. From the day when 
Queen Mary went with a courtly procession through 
the City to Westminster, accompanied by her sister 
Elizabeth, and the undemonstrative Anne of Cleves — 
who seems to have lived unassailed, or, at all events, 
uninjured, through the tragedies and troubles of the 
time — to the day when Mary's death, at her house 



152 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [YIII. 

at St. James's, lifted a heavy sense of dread and 
constant uncertainty from the nation, there were 
few accessions to the chronicle of Fleet Street in 
its relation to the advancement of learning. The 
smoke of the fires from Smithfield seemed to stifle 
the aspirations of the poet ; the figure of the heads- 
man to stand foremost in the chronicle of events; 
the creaking of the gibbets to forbid the repose 
necessary to graceful imaginings or the thoughtful 
conclusions of independent scholarship. 

Most prominent among the personages who ap- 
peared in that great thoroughfare was Thomas Wyatt 
— son of the poet-friend of Surrey. His ill-con- 
sidered attempt at insurrection (though it gained 
such support from many citizens that Mary had 
hurriedly to disavow her intention of marrying 
against the Avill of the people) ended by the sur- 
render of the leader, who, by dela}^, had missed the 
opportunity of entering the City by Lud Gate. 

So far from there having been any encouragement 
of letters in that reign, the one act which might have 
seemed to indicate a desire to promote the dissemina- 
tion of learning by means of the printing press, was 
directly calculated to suppress all liberty of pubhca- 
tion. It must be admitted that there was no conceal- 
ment of the intention of the Queen and her Spanish 
husband in granting a charter of incorporation to the 
Stationers' Company, for the preamble of the charter 
itself was clear enough : — 

" Know ye, that we, considering and manifestly 
perceiving that several seditious and heretical books. 



Till.: THE STATIOXEB.^- CRAETEE. 153 

both in verse and prose, are daily published, stamped, 
and pi-inted, by divers scandalous, schismatical, and 
heretical persons, not only exciting our subjects and 
liege men to sedition and disobedience against us, our 
croTVQ and dignity, but also to the renewal and pro- 
pagating very gi'eat and detestable heresies agaiast 
the faith and soimd Cathohc doctrine of holy mother 
the Chiu'ch : and being willing to provide a proper 
remedy in this case, we, of our own special favour, 
certain knowledge, and mere"*^ motive, do will, give 
and gi'ant, to oiu' beloved and faithful hege men and 
freemen, of the mystery or art of a stationer of the 
City of London, and the suburbs thereof, that fi'om 
henceforth they may be, in deed, fact, and name, one 
body of itseh for ever, and one society corporate for 
ever, with one master and two keepers or wardens : 
and that they may enjoy a perpetual succession.'*' 
But the reason for this incoi-poration was stated to 
be that no person within the kingdom of England 
or dominions thereof '■' should practise or exercise the 
art or mysteiy of piinting '"" who was not a member 
of the Company, and the Company should have the 
power to search for all books printed otherwise than 
by then monopoly, and to '-seize, take away, have, 
bm-n, or convert to the proper use of the said society, 
all and singular those books which are, or shall be, 
printed or stamped contrary to the fomi of any 
statute, act, or proclamation made or to be made."' 
This was what was devised ao-ainst the successors 

o 

of Caxton, who had settled ia Fleet Street, and had 

* Mere, in the sense of orih./. sole, or complete. 



15i THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [YIII. 

formerly published and sold, without molestation, 
books containing free expressions, which had been 
circulated before the introduction of the press. 

The restriction embodied in the charter became 
to a great extent a dead letter on the accession of 
Elizabeth, for, though it was at first uncertain how 
she, who had been a crafty and skilful temporiser, 
would support the completion of the Reformation, 
the tide of pubUc opinion soon decided the question 
of a comparatively free press ; and the demand for 
books, which the revival of Protestantism occasioned, 
increased the number of the members of the 
Stationers' Company from thirty-five to a hundred 
and forty. Their charter still held, however, in 
regard to the duty of searching for and suppressing 
heretical and seditious books; but the sedition and 
heresy were those of popery ; and as Elizabeth granted 
special monopolies to other people who were printers 
of Bibles, printers of law books, and printers of Latin 
books, and of music, the incorporated stationers were 
in evil case, and petitioned Lord Treasurer Burleigh 
to stand their friend, as he had theretofore done, as 
special patron of their Company, and favourer of the 
art of printing. An arrangement was then made 
that the Company should have the monopoly of 
printing "all manner of books of primers, psalters, 
and psalms, all manner of almanacks and books 
and pamphlets tending to the same purpose, the 
ABC with the little Catechism, and the Cate- 
chism in English and Latine by Alexander Nowell." 
But there were sturdy objectors to all monopolies. 



YJil.] CLAIMS TO FBEE FRIXTIXG. 155 

who claimed the right to print an}' lawfLil book, and 
contended that it was contrary to the hberties of 
the City of London for the Queen, through ill advice, 
to forbid them to do so. Two of these men persisted, 
and, strange to sa}^ after several attempts to '-'bring 
them to book," which they stoutly resisted, they were 
not fiu'ther interfered with. The monopolies, except 
that granted to the Stationers' Company, died out 
and were not renewed, and the Company itself, by 
its numbers and wealth, achieved a success which 
enabled it, even with the limitations imposed upon 
it, to prosper exceedingly, and eventuaU}', in a later 
age, to hold its o^m in the face of more open com- 
petition. 

xlmong the books which had the largest chcu- 
lation soon after the death of Mary, was one which 
for some generations remained, not only a standard 
work of reference and " a book without which no 
library would be complete," but one for household 
reading, gruesome though it was. On the shelf, in 
the hall ^-indow, or in the book closet or oak chest 
of almost ever}' countr}' mansion, in many a farmer's 
house, as well as in vicarages, and in the dwellings of 
citizens and traders. Fox's '' Book of Mart3'rs," as it 
was called, held a prominent place with the Bible 
and (in the country) some book of household or 
sporting lore, like that of Juhana Berners, or Tusser's 
"Points of Husbandly," printed and pubhshed by 
Tottell, in Fleet Street. Fox's " Acts and Monuments 
of the Church ; or, Book of Martyrs," when it was 
translated from Latin into Enoiish in 1563, was 



156 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [VIII. 

dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, who had then reigned 
above five years. It was ordered to be set up in 
parish churches for the use of all the people, except 
in times of Divine service. John Day, the printer 
of it, was a staunch Protestant, who had been a printer 
of Bibles in the reign of Edward YI., and had been 
a prisoner, and afterwards a refugee, in the time of 
the Marian persecution ; and the large demand for 
Fox's book was some compensation to him. 

We have already spoken of Day, who had his 
printing-office by or over Aldersgate, with the in- 
scription " Arise, for it is Day." He was a stirring 
man, and had shops for the sale of his books in 
other places besides the printing-office. John Fox, 
whom he had probably kno^vn while he was in exile, 
became his editor, translator, and probably corrector 
for the press, having previously done these duties 
for Oporinus, of Basle. 

Fox, or, as he spelt it, Foxe, was expelled from his 
fellowship in Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1545, on 
a charge of heresy. Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, 
Stratford-on-Avon, the progenitor of the Lucy as- 
sociated with the biography of Shakespeare, engaged 
him as tutor for his children. Fox afterwards re- 
moved to London, and was employed in the same 
capacity by the Duchess of Richmond for the children 
of the Earl of Surrey, while their grandfather, the 
Duke of Norfolk, was still in the Tower, where he 
remained till the accession of Mary, who released 
him. But the accession of Mary placed Fox in such 
danger, because of his principles, that he fled, mth 



YIII.] JOHN FOX. 157 

his wife and other Protestants, to Switzerland, settled 
at Basle, and there gained a living by reading and 
correcting for the press for the famous printer already 
mentioned. 

It was there that Fox, who received frequent and 
accm-ate intelli- 
o'ence of events in 
England, planned 
his principal work, 
" The Acts and 
Monuments," a first 
sketch of which 
was, it has been 
said, suggested to 
him by Lady Jane 
Grey. This first 
sketch was printed 
by Oporinus, and 
was followed five 

years afterwards by the enlarged work. Both these were 
in Latin, and the last contained, of course, more ample 
particulars, and additional chapters of martyrology. 

Coming again to London, Fox appears to have 
found a refuge in Aldgate, at the Manor Place (Duke's 
Place) of one of his former pupils, the young Duke of 
Norfolk, but he was soon at work mth the enter- 
prising John Day, and early in 1563 appeared the 
first English edition, in one large volume, of his 
"Acts and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous 
Dayes, touching matters of the Church, wherein are 
comprehended and described the great persecutions 




158 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [YIII. 

and horrible troubles that have been wrought and 
practised by the Romishe Prelates, especiallye in these 
Realms of England and Scotlande, from the yeare of 
our Lord a Thousande, unto the Tyme noAv present. 
Gathered and collected according to the true copies 
and wry tinges certificatorie, as wel of the parties them- 
selves that suffered, as also out of the Bishop's Regis- 
ters which were the doers thereof. By John Foxe." 

With Day. Fox, after a time, went to live, but 
he also, at one period of his dwelling in London, 
had a lodging in Grub Street. At that time Grub 
Street, in Cripplegate, though not an aristocratic 
place of abode, was not associated with the dis- 
paraging reputation which began to attach to it at 
a later period, when it became a locality wherein 
the writers of small books, ephemeral party pamph- 
lets, almanacks, and tradesmen's advertisements, 
found cheap lodgings. 

Through the good offices of Cecil, Fox received a 
prebendal stall at Salisbury, though he was not in 
conformity with some still surviving tenets and cere- 
monies of the Roman Church. His connection with 
the printers and booksellers gave him a direct associa- 
tion with the restoration of Fleet Street as the High- 
way of Letters, even as his preaching at Paul's Cross 
renewed the memory of the days when, as a poor and 
almost penniless man, he may have paced the aisle of 
the great Cathedral, " dining with Duke Humphrey," 
and in constant fear of being included in the martyr- 
doms of which he was to become the most assiduous 
recorder. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY. 

The Heavy' Crown — Elizabeth in the Highway of Letters — Printers 
— Chroniclers — John Stow in Fleet Street — His "Annals," 
"Chronicle," and "Survey" — Thynne — Reprints of Chaucer — 
With Stow from Baynard's Castle to Temple Bar — Lord Pem- 
broke — Elizabeth at Baynard's Castle — Dissolution of the Black 
Fiiars — Liberty of the Friary — Hunsdon House — Pollution of 
the Fleet— Conduits — Shoe Lane — Tankard Bearers — Lambe's 
Conduit — Fleet Street Taverns — Eating and Drinking — Veni- 
son — The Fleet Prison — Inns of Law — The Temple — Pageants, 
Masques, Comedies, Tragedies, Interludes — Dancing — The 
Dancing of Elizabeth — The "Pavo" — Gambling — "Primero" — 
"Noddy" — "Nine Men's Morris" — Salisbury Cornet— Sir Thomas 
Sackville — AYhite Friars — "Sanctuary" — A New Temple Bar 
— Stowe a Tj^ical Londoner — His Long Life and Labour- — 
His Library — His Devotion to Letters — His Eeward — His 
Monument. 

" Be patient ; it will seem 
lighter wlien it is on your 
own head," was the quick, 
subtle reply of Noailles, 
the French Ambassador, 
when the princess Elizabeth 
whispered to him that 

CAP OF FOOL IN OLD PLAY. ,i T . 1 ^ 

the crown which she 
carried before her sister, at Mary's coronation, was 
" very heavy." 

Whether the acute diplomatist had observed 




160 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [IX. 

that the somewhat skittish, but still self-possessed 
and scholarly girl had in her character those 
quahties which would enable her to govern a nation 
at a turning point in its history, it is impossible to 
say. That she did possess them there can be little 
doubt, and it is noticeable that, w^hile she inherited 
much of the personal assumption, the love of shows, 
pageants, and good company, and the talent for 
magnificence which distinguished her father, she 
also displayed some of that statecraft and self- 
contained power of temporising and of misleading, 
which was characteristic of the pohtic Henry YII. 

She possessed her father's acuteness in reading 
character, and throughout her long reign, when 
artful and designing men thought they were deceiv- 
ing her, it was she who, without apparent perception 
of their aims, was deceiving them. It was this 
faculty of perception of the motives and quahties 
of the men by whom she was surrounded w^hich 
enabled her to choose her advisers wisely, when, at 
the age of twenty-five, she wore that cro-^^m of 
whose weight she had whispered five years before 
when she carried it at her sister's coronation. 

The young Queen, having come from Hatfield 
on the 23rd of November, with a joyous escort of 
more than 1,000 persons, was met at Highgate first 
by the bishops, to each of whom she gave her hand to 
kiss, except Bonner. At the foot of Highgate Hill the 
Lord Mayor and Corporation of the City of London 
awaited her, and, joining her escort, conducted 
her to the Charter House, then the town mansion 



IX.] QUEEN ELIZABETH IN FLEET STREET. 161 
of her friend Lord North. On the afternoon of the 
28th she entered the City by Cripple Gate, and thence 
" rode in state along by the wall to the Tower," where 
she remained till Monday, the 5th of December, 




MAP OF NEIGHBOUBHOOD OF ST. PAUL'S IN 1510. 



when she embarked in a state barge and with a 
brilliant retinue of attendants was rowed up the 
river to Somerset House, which had come into 
the possession of the Crown on the attainder of the 
Duke. 

The 14th of January, 1559, had been fixed for 
the coronation, and that youthful, slight, but dignified 
and determined figure came to fill the place which 
could be filled by none else. 

Again the bells are ringing, till the church towers- 
rock. From every roof and spire flags are flying, from 



162 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [IX. 

every balcony in the great thoroughfares of Chepe, 
Ludgate Hill, and Fleet Street hang tapestry, car- 
pets, strips of gaudy baize, silk, and velvet pile. 
At the great conduits are stationed allegorical shows, 
quaint devices, musicians, reciters of loyal odes. 
Tables are laid in every house, and in the very 
streets, and are spread Avith beef, braAvn, capons, bread 
and cakes of all sorts. Wine is broached at the 
tavern doors, bottles and tankards of sack and canary 
are passed from hand to hand. Ale may be had 
for the asking. The City is full of splendid devices 
and pageants, in one of which appear the father and 
mother of the Queen, standing together, in complete 
oblivion of what has occurred since the fair Anne 
Boleyn went, amidst such a show, to her corona- 
tion. 

The late troublous times had not, as we have seen, 
been favourable to increased activity in the world of 
letters, and the restrictions placed on j)i"hiting by 
Queen Mary had not tended to the promotion of 
learning. Among the books prohibited by an Act of 
Parliament in the time of Philip and Mary, was Hall's 
Chronicle, of which four editions had been issued by 
Richard Grafton, printer to Edward YI. Early in 
the reign of Elizabeth the same printer issued "An 
Abridgment of the Chronicles of England," and a 
little book of a hundred leaves, with the big title, 
" A Manuell of the Chronicles of Engiande from the 
Creacion of the Worlde to this Yere of our Lorde, 
1565." This was followed by two folio volumes, in 
1568 and 1569, of "A Chronicale at Large and Meere 



IX.] JOHN STOW. 163 

History of the Affayres of Englande and Kings of 
the Same." 

But a book entitled "A Summary of EngHsh 
Chronicles," by John Stow, pubUshed in 1561, was a 
serious rival to Grafton's book, and there was a hvely 
contention, in printed prefaces, between the two 
compilers. Finally, S tow's large and elaborate work 
of 1,215 pages quarto, " Annales ; or, a Generall 
Chronicle of England from Brute unto this Present 
Year of Christ, 1580," became the more important 
work, and is still a book of standard reference, while 
the others are httle known. Of this there were 
several editions, one of them in 1631, twenty years 
after the author's death, and carried up to date by 
another hand. 

The memory of John Stow should be ever re- 
vered in the Highway of Letters, where it would be 
fitting that a monument should be raised in his 
honour. He it was who, in 1561, prepared a 
complete edition of Chaucer, whose works. Stow 
himself tells us, " were partly published in print by 
William Caxton in the reign of Henry YI. ; increased 
by William Thynne, Esquire, in the reign of Henry 
YIII. ; corrected and twice increased through mine 
own painful labours in the reigii of Queen Elizabeth, 
to wit, in the year 1561, and again beautified with 
notes by me, collected out of divers records and monu- 
ments, which I delivered to my loving friend, Thomas 
Speght ; and he, having drawn the same into a good 
form and method, as also explained the old and 
obscure words, etc., hath published them in Anno 

L 2 



164 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [IX. 

1597." It was in this edition that "Chaucer's Dream" 
and " Tlie Flower and the Leaf " were first printed. 

Stow's acquaintance with the history and antiquity 
of the buildings and monuments of the metropolis 
enabled him to achieve the work by which he con- 
tinues to be as well known as by his " Annals." His 
" Survey of London " has long been indispensable to 
any ivriter who desires to make accurate reference to 
the antiquities and memorials, as well as to the topo- 
graphy and the older localities, of the City. 

To see what was the general aspect of the High- 
way of Letters in the reign of Elizabeth we must, as 
it were, stand with Stow, as we stood with Chaucer 
and Gower, upon Fleet Bridge, and look once more 
beyond the Fleet Prison and what used to be the 
palace of Bridewell, towards Temple Bar. Ba3mard's 
Castle still stands, with its heavy square buttresses, 
its octagonal towers, its small, narrow windows in 
pairs, one above the other, its square court, and the 
bridge and stairs which give access to the river 
front. 

The castle ceased to be a royal possession when, 
in the time of Edward VI., it became the residence of 
Sir William Sydney, the Royal Chamberlain; and 
from him it passed to William Herbert, first Lord 
of Pembroke, Avho married Anne, sister of Queen 
Catherine Parr. Pembroke was a judicious trimmer, 
appeared prominently in all the Court pageants, and 
was sent to meet Philip of Spain on his arrival in 
England. After the marriage of Phihp and Mary, 
Pembroke came to London, and with goodly show 



IX.] ELIZABETH AT BAYNABU8 CASTLE. 165 

marched to Baynard's Castle, followed by a retinue of 
two thousand horsemen, in velvet coats with three 
laces of gold, and gold chains, besides sixty gentlemen 
in blue coats, with his badge of the Green Dragon. 
Pembroke had been among the promoters of the 
claims of Lady Jane Grey, but discreetly backed 
out when the plot became dangerous ; went in with 





PROPERTIES OF VICE AND FOOL IN OLD PLAY. {From BoUCe' 

txons of Shakespeare y) 



lUastra- 



tremendous enthusiasm for Queen Mary — whose sup- 
porters met at Baynard's Castle — and was foremost 
in the show at the coronation of Elizabeth, who ap- 
pointed him Master of the Horse. 

At a later day her Majesty went in state to a 
great entertainment and supper at the Castle, which 
she did not leave till the Earl handed her into her 
state barge at the Water-gate at ten o'clock at night, 
amidst a blaze of fireworks, the sound of music, and 



166 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [IX. 

a flotilla of boats, in which state her Majesty was 
attended by the Earl to Whitehall. 

The church, precinct, and sanctuary of the Black 
Friars was surrendered to Henry YIII. in 1538, on 
the dissolution of monasteries, and his successor, the 
young Edward, having sold the hall and the site of 
the prior's lodgings to Sir Francis Bryan, afterwards 
granted " the whole house, site (or circuit compass), 
and precinct of the late Friars Preachers within the 
City of London," to Sir Thomas Cawarden, Master of 
the Bevels. The yearly value of this grant was 
reckoned at nineteen pounds. 

Though the precinct was secularised, the privilege 
of sanctuary remained, the place becoming a " liberty," 
in which certain special laws and regulations of the 
civic authorities were not enforced. The principal 
house in the Friary was Hunsdon House, called after 
her Majesty's cousin and Chamberlain, Henry Carey, 
Lord Hunsdon. 

The Fleet Biver had so degenerated, in consequence 
of the failure or stoppage of some of its sources of 
supply, but more from the constant pollution of the 
stream, that it was called Fleet Dyke, or ditch. It 
was partly covered in, and that portion of it which 
formerly flowed by the wall of the Fleet Prison was 
nowhere to be seen above ground. The cisterns and 
conduits were in full flow at the end of Shoe Lane, and 
the tankard-bearers had a busy time of it in convey- 
ing supplies of water to the houses in great vessels, 
holding about three gallons, and shaped like the 
frustum of a cone, having a small handle near the 



IX.l THE CONDUITS. 167 

top, and closed by a plug or bung, so that they might 
be readily carried. 

There were many conduits in the City, and one 
that had lately been rebuilt between Snow Hill and 
Holborn by Mr. William Lambe, late Gentleman of 
the Chapel to Henry VIH. This was supplied by 
another conduit, built by the same gentleman, at the 
north end of Red Lion Street, and called Lambe's 
Conduit. 

The great increase of houses in the City was the 
cause of some of the former springs and wells being 
filled up and built over, and the Queen, like the late 
Queen Mary, set herself to forbid the adding of so 
many new dwellings to London, though she did not so 
strictly command that the number of taverns should 
be fewer. There were in Fleet Street and the neigh- 
bourhood many such places, the resort of gentlemen 
of some condition and of men of letters, ayIio went 
there for the diversion of witty discourse and good 
company, as well as good eating and drinking. 

The eating and drinking had, indeed, reached to 
such a height in the City that in 1554, in the late 
Queen's reign, the Corporation passed a law to re- 
strain the extravagance and gluttony, commanding 
that no mayor, alderman, sheriff, or commoner should 
have at dinner or supper more than one course of six 
dishes, whether hot or cold, though one or tv\^o of the 
said dishes might be served hot after the first three 
or five were disposed of. Brawn, collops with eggs, 
salads, pottage, butter, cheese, eggs, herrings, sprats, 
shrimps, shell-fish, and unbaked fruit were " not to be 



168 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



[IX. 



accounted for any of the said dishes above men- 
tioned," and the restriction was to be removed when 




OLD SEEJEA^-TS' IX^'■ 



a foreign ambassador, or any of the Privy Council, 
should be of the part}^ 

These sumptuary laws had been so little observed 
that the Court was offended at the enormous con- 
sumption of venison in the City, even at the taverns 



IX.] THE DRAMA AT THE ''HOUSES OF COURT." 169 

and cooksliops of Fleet Street and its tributaries, and 
venison was, therefore, left out of the bills of fare. 

Besides the supply of water to the cisterns from 
Tyburn, by pipes of lead, there was another scheme 
in hand by which Peter Morris (or Maurice), a 
Dutchman, was to supply, by the same means, 
water from the Thames, raised by a forcier, or 
system of water-wheels standing near London Bridge ; 
and thus the water was conveyed to the eastern part 
of the City: while another forcier, made by Bevis 
Bulmer, was to be set up near Broken Wharf, to 
supply Thames water into the houses about West 
Cheap, Paul's, and Fleet Street. 

The Fleet Prison was unchanged in its evil 
reputation, as a place to which the High Court, or 
the " Star Chamber," could consign accused prisoners. 
The Inns of Law in Fleet Street were flourishing: 
Serjeants' Inn, with its namesake in Chancer}^ Lane, 
Clifford's Inn, and the Inner and Middle Temple, 
" Houses of Court," where the students and members 
were as famous for their pageants and the acting of 
masques, comedies, tragedies, interludes, and his- 
tories, both true and feigned, as their forerunners, the 
parish clerks, once were for performing the old stage 
plays, called " mystery or miracle plays," or those 
more lately called " moralities." 

In the masques eminent persons of the Court 
often took part, and at most of the entertainments 
dancing held an important place. Dancing, like 
music, was an accomplishment in which all sought 
to attain grace and skill, for it was the amusement 



170 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTEB8. [IX. 

most in vogue, not in England only, but on the 
Continent of Europe, and Queen Elizabeth was herself 
famous for dancing " high and disposedly." A foreign 
ambassador from a Koman Catholic Court wrote, 
with real or simulated horror, that he had " seen the 
supreme head of the English Church dancing." 
The English courtiers and gentry were famous for 
the elegance, stateliness, and activity with which 
they gravely executed the most difficult steps and 
turns, like those of the " 2^^^^^^^ " ^i' " peacock," which 
was the favourite, and of course differed widely from 
those ruder gambols which were seen in the country, 
or about the maypoles in the City and elsewhere. 

The students of the Courts of Law — who formerly 
were sharply rebuked for gambling at " push-groat " 
or " shovel-board " — were now to be found at 
"jorimero " and other games of cards borrowed 
from the foreigner, or at the more vulgar native ac- 
complishments of " new cut," " banker out," " lodair " 
and " noddy" ; while backgammon and " tables," 
or draughts, were as common in London as " nine 
men's morris " (or " merelles ") was in the country 
and in the open playgrounds of the suburbs. 
" Shovel-board " or " shove-groat " was still played 
at the taverns or the lower gaming-houses, for it 
was the indoor form of " nine men's morris," only 
the "nine holes," instead of being cut in the turf of a 
village green or a meadow, were numbered divisions 
on a smooth table of Avood, upon which a groat or 
silver penny was jerked from the palm of the hand in 
such wise that it might alight on a lucky number. 



IX.] SIB THOMAS SAGKVILLE. 171 

A larger cistern had at this time been placed at 
the standard at' the south end of Shoe Lane, having 
a fine tower of stone, with an image of St. Christopher 
on the top, and angels standing round about with sweet- 
sounding bells before them, whereupon, by an engine 
placed in the tower, " they divers hours of the day and 
night chimed such an hymn as was appointed." 

There had been great changes about Salisbury 
Court since the London inn of the Bishops of Salis- 
bury came into possession of Sir Thomas Sackville, 
the Lord Treasurer. He enlarged it with stately 
buildings; and beyond Water Lane and the house 
called " The Hanging Sword," the former house and 
church of the White Friars, surrendered in the reign 
of Henry VIIL, had given place to many fair houses, 
lodgings for noblemen and others. There still re- 
mained some fading and decaying tenements there, and 
the former privilege of sanctuary clung to the place 
and made it a resort for certain persons of low repute, 
though it was near to Serjeants' Inn, where the judges 
and learned serjeants of the law lodged in term time. 

At the Temple sundry changes had been made by 
the repairing of the gate-house of the Middle Temple 
by Sir Amias Paulet, as we have seen, and by the 
rebuilding of the hall of the Middle Temple in 1572. 

Temple Bar, too, which in the reign of Henry, 
when Queen Anne Boleyn went in State to West- 
minster, had been new painted, and a gate-house, 
or stage, erected for " divers singing men and child- 
ren," was now newly built with a gateway, and above 
it a roofed structure of timber across the road. 



172 TBE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [IX. 

So let us part with old John Stow on Fleet Bridge, 
though Fleet Street will know him for years to come, 
even as it has known him as a constant chronicler for 
more than half a century. A typical Londoner he, for 
his father was a tailor in Threadneedle Street — the 
tailors' quarter — and he himself afterwards followed 
the same calHng in Aldgate. 

There is no record that he had a soul above 
tailoring, but he had so great a loA^e for learning, and 
especially for historical researches and the compilation 
of the national chronicles, that he spent most of his 
earnings on books, and by the time that he was forty 
— at the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth — had 
collected a library of curious volumes and devoted 
himself to the work which has made his name famous 
in the world of letters. " It is now eight years," he 
"vvrote, in 1573, " since I, seeing the confused order of our 
late English chronicles, and the ignorant handling of 
ancient affairs, leaving mine own peculiar gains, conse- 
crated myself to the search of our famous antiquities." 

He certainly does not seem to have gained much 
by the change, in a pecuniary sense, and after the 
accession of Elizabeth, when a search was being made 
for contraband, or Romish, books, he ran some risk 
of being sent to the Fleet, on the report of Bishop 
Grindal's emissaries, as "a suspicious person, Avith many 
dangerous and superstitious books in his possession." 

Stow went on his way, however, for he was doing 
such good work, and troubled so little about other 
matters, that he was regarded as harmless, and was 
left to prove his loyalty in his own way. 



IX.J STOWS REWARD. 173 

So the tall, lean old man, with his clear, searching 
eyes, undimmed by all his poring over black-letter 
chronicles, his cheerM, placid face, his sober, mild, 



OLD TEMPLE BAE, ERECTED IN THE EEIGN OF JAXES I. ^ 

and courteous manner, and his remarkable memory, 
spent his life peacefully in the pursuit which he loved, 
travelling often on foot to visit cathedrals and other 
places where records might be found. The editor of 



174 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [IX. 

his " Annales " said of him, not long after his death — 
" He always protested never to have written anything 
either for malice, fear, or favour, nor to seek his own 
particular gain and vainglory ; and that his only pains 
and care was to write truth." 

He had, indeed, spent all he had of strength, learn- 
ing, and money, when in 1603, at seventy-nine years 
of age, he applied for relief from James I., and received, 
as " a recompense of his faithful labours and for the 
encouragev.ient of the like " — a licence to beg ! That 
is to say, James granted him letters patent to collect 
" voluntary contributions and kind gratuities " amongst 
" our loving subjects," and headed the list with a con- 
tribution, the amount of Avhich is not recorded. Stow 
did not live long enough to profit much by the " un- 
usual manner " adopted for his relief in his old age. 
Two years afterwards he died, and his widow set up in 
the Church of St. Andrew Undershaft the monument 
of which Ave have already spoken. 

It is strange to think of this quiet old enthusiast, 
moving so calmly in the Highway of Letters, amidst 
the changeful life and strenuous activities of those 
" spacious days of great Elizabeth." The dissemina- 
tion of books by printing had not greatly advanced, 
for the restrictions placed on the publication of the 
literature of the time in England brought the business 
of English printers to a low ebb, and prevented them 
from so improving their art that they could stand 
comparison Avith the folloA\^ers of the craft in France, 
Holland, and Germany, Avhence came many of the 
books sold in the shops of stationers in Fleet Street. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. 

The Highway of Letters in the days of Elizabeth — Courtiers — 
'Prentices — Flattery and Fashion— Taverns in Fleet Street — 
High Living and High Thinking — Wigs and Euffs — Shows and 
Amusements — Inn Yards — Stage Plays — Thames Watermen — 
From Temple Stairs to Bankside — Bankes — Tarleton — Defeat of 
the Armada — Procession from Somerset House to St, Paul's — 
Fii'st Coaches — Taylor, the Water Poet —The Queen at Black 
Friars — Rare Doings at the Horn Tavern — Witty and Wise at 
the Mermaid — Raleigh — Bacon — Buildings and their Occupiers 
in Fleet Street. 

The printing of many, or, indeed, most of tlie more 
striking productions of English philosophers, essayists, 
poets, and dramatists, in the reign of Elizabeth, was- 
deferred till the latter part of her reign, or till after 
the accession of James the First. But the effects of 
that brilliant and exciting period — the opening of a 
new era in letters and the renewal of a struggle for 
increased fi-eedom — coincident with a singular devotion 
and loyalty — were displayed in an advanced mode of 
thought, in power of expression, and by great achieve- 
ments in the area of learning and of poetry, as well as 
by the splendid attainments, marvellous variety of 
faculty and literary ability, which distinguished lead- 
ing courtiers and statesmen. Many of these were 
themselves famous contributors to the impetus which 
was raising the souls of men to a purer atmosphere 
of thought and a nobler aspiration after liberty. 

The Queen herself was no mean judge of 



176 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [X. 

pretensions to learning, or to the refinements of litera- 
ture, tliougli her occasional charm of manner alternated 

with a directness and 
strength of language 
which did not stop short 
at a round oath or two 
and somewhat rough 
threats. That she had 
a violent temj)er is 
evident from the record 
of her boxing the ears 
of her waiting- worn en, 
though it is also noted 
that she afterwards re- 
pented of her passionate 
rudeness. To a similar 
box on the ear, as a re- 
buke to the arrogant 
discourtesy of Essex in turning his back upon her 
when she contradicted him in the Council, is attri- 
buted the last furious outbreak and subsequent rebel- 
Hon of that haughty spirit. 

We sometimes find it dilficult to understand 
how the courtiers of Elizabeth could continue to 
address her in the higrh-flown and extravag-ant terms 
which they habitually used in sjDeaking or ^mtmg of 
her. Strange as it may appear, their utterances were 
not altogether insmcere. Either they had come to 
regard her as a kind of earthly divinity, from being 
accustomed to speak and think of her in lover-like 
strains, or else her keen insight, ready tact, and 




EICHAED TAELETOX [jh 179). 

o)' old Woodcut.) 



{Iro; 



178 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [X. 

the singular attractions of her youthful presence, had 
originally led them to make her the ideal represent- 
ative of the power and influence of Avomanly grace, 
and the imperial supremacy of those attainments to 
which men of high perceptive faculty must ever yield 
reverence and loyal obedience. 

The style of living in the time of Elizabeth was 
profuse ; the fashion of dress among the higher classes 
was sumptuous and expensive. Laws were passed 
forbidding the London apprentices to wear costly 
apparel, or those ornaments and decorations which 
distinguished noblemen and gentlemen. But the 
London apprentices had already become an important 
body, and their cudgels and staves, when dexterously 
handled, as they knew how to handle them, were a 
match for what appeared to be more deadly weapons. 
No rules could have been effectual in preventing 
them from regarding themselves as an important 
part of the community, not only ready, but willing, 
to resent any insult or interference from members 
of the Court ; and the cry of " Clubs ! Clubs ! " would 
raise a turbulent but organised assembly of youths, 
who, at the given signal, would leave shop and stall 
and join the main body against any attempted in- 
fringement of Avhat they conceived to be their rights 
and privileges. The great body of City apprentices 
had long been a force to be reckoned with in any 
attempt to suppress the liberty of the subject between 
Temple Bar and the Tower. 

Plainly as those dressed who were in a condition 
of servitude, Fleet Street, with its numerous shops, its 



X.] SHOWS IN FLEET STREET. 179 

lively taverns, its gaudy signs swinging from the over- 
hanging fronts of the gabled houses, was full of colour 
and movement. It was now not only the Highway of 
Letters, to which men of wit and learning resorted, and 
where they met for the interchange of news, and talk 
about books and the latest new poem or stage play, 
but it was also a highway for shows of curious and 
amusing objects, and for performances of various 
kinds. 

Bankes, with his horse Marocco, who could shoAv 
as much intelligence in his tricks as the learned 
animals of later times ; Dick Tarleton, the famous 
jester and improvisatore, and other attractive enter- 
tainers, were to be seen there. The great inn j^ards, with 
their surrounding galleries, on which the upper rooms 
opened, were the scenes of performances similar to, 
if not identical with, the dramas which now began to 
find their way to two theatres on Bankside, South- 
wark. There the proprietors of the Stage Play-house 
and the Bear-garden took it in turns to give their 
afternoon performances, and Thames watermen did a 
busy trade in taking visitors across the river from 
the landing-stages at the Temple, Whitefriars, Puddle- 
dock, Queenhithe, or Dowgate. 

Most conspicuous for the inn-yard entertainments in 
this locality of Fleet Street, was the Belle Savage Inn, 
about which, and the derivation of its title, and how 
the Bell, or Belle, came to be prefixed to the family 
name of Savage, so much has been written. The sub- 
ject does not seem to have excited much attention 
till Steele, or Addison, took it up in the " Spectator," 
m2 



180 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



X. 



at which tune the urn was called the " Old Bell (or 
Belly) Savage." The latest addition to speculation as 
to the orisfin of the name is that of the Avriter of these 
lines, who suggests that it was the Savage famil}^ inn, 

adjoining the Bail, 
or Bailey (outwork, 
or boundary) of 
New Gate, and was 
called the "Bail," 
or "Bailey" Savage, 
and afterwards the 
"Old Bailey Sav- 
age " Inn. 

The fashion of 
male attire was as 
various as that of 
the ladies. The 
" trunk hose " had 
the upper portion, 
or breeches, either 
coming straight 
to the knee, or 
stuffed out to an inordinate size, so that the seats and 
benches of Parliament, or of halls and places of as- 
sembly, had to be mdened to make room for them ; the 
doublets had slashed sleeves, and were embroidered 
with silk and pearls; men wore velvet cloaks, 
jewelled buttons, and roAvs of gems for the neck, or 
as ornaments to hats, which were made of silk, velvet, 
beaver, or taffety : the starched ruffs were but a size or 
two smaller than those of the ladies, who carried great 




THE FOOL OF THE OLD PLAY. {Fvom Bonce's 
" lUiistrations of Shakespeare.''''') 



X.] FLEET STREET IN THE FASHION. 181 

fans of feathers, and mirrors hanging from their girdles, 
and abroad or at assembhes sometimes wore masks 
of black velvet, with glass eyes. In the latter part 
of the reign of Elizabeth, perfumed silken or linen 
gloves, embroidered with gold or silver, and stockings 
of knitted silk, were worn, the first pair of such stock- 
ings having been presented to the Queen, as a Ncav 
Year's gift, to supersede the fine, but clumsy, stockings 
made of thin cloth. In the morning Fleet Street was 
full of life and colour, talk and laughter. The dinner, 
taken at midday, was the principal repast, and at the 
Court, and in the houses of noblemen and gentry, was 
a stately affair ; the tables covered with fine napery, 
and the dishes mostly of silver. The wines were 
numerous, but stood upon a sideboard, each guest 
calling for a flask, or flagon, of that which he preferred. 
The gentlemen wore their plumed and jewelled hats on 
all occasions, except in exchanging courtesies, giving 
or acknowledging a toast, and in the presence of 
persons of much superior rank. 

Ordinarily the courses of dinner were beef, mutton, 
venison, pork, poultry, and fish, but there was no fi'esh 
beef for more than half the year. The vegetables 
were usually salads of boiled coleworts, lettuce, cress, 
endive, angelica, and various herbs. The drink was 
mostly ale, claret, and sack or canary — sack being 
neither more nor less than sherry, or sometimes what 
we should call sherry "negus," sweetened with 
Muscovado sugar. 

The common people, of course, fared more plainly, 
but ale was the ordinary drinlv, and was always taken 



182 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [X. 

to sea for the crews of sliips, where couimanders hke 
Drake and Raleigh also drank wine, and occasionally 
held a kind of state to show semi-savage people and 
foreign visitors, who Ivnew something of costly 
ceremony, that the mariners of the Queen of England 
could have their food served on silver, drink their ^^ine 
from flagons of plate and to the sound of a band of 
music, and yet be in accord with their free follow^ers. 

Some of these sea-captains and gentlemen-adven- 
turers w^ould be about Fleet vStreet after Drake's ship 
— which had been re-christened the Golden Hind, 
and had made the voyage round the Avorld — was 
brought to Deptford, Avhen the Queen went on board 
to a grand state bcinquet, and bestowed the honour 
of knio'hthood on the dariuQ- navio'ator, the avowed 
enemy of the Spaniard. 

We may imagine the excitement of the multitude 
in the famous thorouoiifare when, after the defeat of 
the Armada, Elizabeth and her brilliant Court went 
to St. Paul's to give thanks for victory. Hawkins, 
Drake, Winter, Frobisher, Palmer, Seymour, South- 
well, Shefiield, Fenner, and others of name and fame, 
are in the list of those who shared the glories of that 
great sea-tight, and on this day of solemn thanks- 
giving the Queen rode from Somerset House to St. 
Paul's on a car or chariot of state, decked with 
streamers taken from the Spanish ships. She was 
attended by all the great officers of the Court, lords 
spiritual and temporal, her ladies of honour, and a 
vast assembly of nobility and gentr}'. From Temj)le 
Bar to the Cathedral the City Companies, in their 



X.] COACHES AND WHIBLIG0TE8. 183 

liveries, lined the way ; the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, in 
scarlet robes, received her Majesty as she entered the 
Highway of Letters. The ladies, in gorgeous apparel, 
rode on palfreys or in litters, each borne between two 
horses. 

The chariot, or coach, wherein the Queen rode was 
a sign of a new departure, much lamented by Stow, 
who tells how, of old time, on great occasions, 
ladies of high rank rode in open chariots, or " whirli- 
cotes." No coaches were known — the palfrey and the 
litter were then the common conveyance for the 
weaker sex, when they did not ride on a pillion behind 
a servitor or gentleman of their own family. The 
whirlicote, or open chariot, may be likened to a 
modern lorry, or timber waggon, with a kind of 
ornamental framework, and seats placed upon it. A 
new coach which had been made for the Queen, and 
was driven by a coachman from Holland, was clumsy 
enough also, but it became a fashion, and each great 
lady must have her coach, though it was a lumbering 
affair, and the roads were so broken, boggy, and 
" noysome " that the new vehicles could be used for 
no distant excursions without considerable risk. 

The watermen afterwards joined in this lament 
for the irruption of coaches, and especially one of 
them named Taylor, who had a marvellous knack of 
rhyming, and whose satirical verses survive to our 
own times. He inveighs in good round terms against 
the ruin to honest wherrymen caused by the coaches, 
which some call hell-carts, " drawn by the pamper'd 
jades of Belgia." 



184 TRE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [X. 

The Queen, gro^v^i old, but still bearing herself 
bravely, went to St. Paul's, and concluded the day 
by witnessing a masque at Lord Herbert's House 
at Blackfriars. Meantime there Avas much feasting 
in the City among liverymen and officers of the 
Corporation; at the houses of the nobles, who still 
dwelt in town mansions within the walls ; and at the 
inns and taverns from Sir Thomas Gresham's new 
Exchange to the Outer Temple, near that house which 
had lately belonged to the Earl of Essex. 

In Fleet Street the taverns were all aglow, and 
reeking with good cheer. At the Mitre, the Cock (a 
famous house for ale), the Bolt-in-Tun, the King's 
Head, near Chancery Lane, the Devil, close to Temple 
Bar, opposite St. Dunstan's Church, the Horn, that 
famous old house, which was left to the Goldsmiths' 
Company in 1405, by Thomas Atte Hay, citizen and 
goldsmith, " for the better support and sustentation of 
the infirm members of the Company,"^ and other 
places, at which, as at the Mermaid, in Bread Street, 
Cheapside, the friends of wit and learning made 
merry company. 

This Horn Tavern is mentioned in a book called 
"Father Hubbard's Tales," published in 1604 : — " And 
when they pleased to think upon us, told us they 
were to dine together at the Horn, in Fleet Street, 
being a house where their lawyer resorted. . . . He 
embraced one young gentleman, and gave him many 

*The Hoin Tavern was, in the last century, converted into 
Anderton's Coffee House, and has been more recently rebuilt as 
Anderton's Hotel. 



X.] 



THE EOBN TAVERN. 



185 

riotous instructions, how to carry himself ; . . • told 
him he must acquaint himself with many gallants of 
the Inns of Court, and keep rank with them that 
spent most; . . . his lodging must be about the 
Strand in any case, being remote from the handicraft 
scent of the City. His eating must be in some 




INXEE COURT OF GEESHAM'S ROYAL EXCHANGE. 



famous tavern, as the Horn, the Mitre, or the 
Mermaid, and then after dinner he must venture 
beyond sea — that is, in a choice pair of nobleman's 
oars to the Bankside, where he must sit out the 
breaking up of a comedy, or the first cut of a tragedy, 
or rather, if his humours so serve him, to call in at 
the Blackfriars, where he should see a nest of boys 
able to ravish a man." This was written at a date — 
a year after the death of Elizabeth — when the drama 
had already broken into a new and unexpected light ; 



186 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [X. 

when the advancement of learning had become a 
passion with men who, though they took a great and 
conspicuous part in the making of* history, contributed 
not a little to the making of hterature. Such a man 
was Raleigh, of the universal genius ; such a man 
was Francis Bacon, the author of the "Novum 
Organum," whose making of history was the un- 
making of his own manhood, and the profanation of 
his vast talents to the sordid betrayal of friendship 
and of honour. 

This " wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind " 
seems to have lost moral fibre as he gained oppor- 
tunities for acquiring wealth and influence. "Our 
young Lord Keeper," as Elizabeth used to call him, 
in reference to the office of his father. Sir Nicholas 
Bacon, had the courage, as member for Middlesex, to 
oppose some arbitrary measures, even at the expense of 
losing the Queen's favour ; but when riches and honours 
came in his way he was associated with some of the 
most cruel and infamous accusations brought against 
the victims of Royal displeasure. 

There was little improvement in the paving and 
lighting of the Highway of Letters at this time. 
The causeways ordered by Henry VIII. were kept 
more or less in rej^air, and there were ordinances for 
cleansing the footways, preserving certain open spaces, 
and lighting tires in the streets, as a remedy against 
the plague ; but though during the reign of Elizabeth 
some admirable and beautiful examples of a new style 
of building appeared in countr}^ mansions and several 
of the more important of the town dwellings of 



X.] ASPECT OF HOUSES AND CAUSEWAYS. 187 

wealthy merchants and noble lords, the ordmary 
houses m such thoroughfares as Fleet Street were 
still of a rustic kind, with the upper storeys over- 




FEOXTISPIECE TO BACON'S " N0VL~M OEGAJf U3I, " ' FIESI EDITIOX, 1620. 



hanging, so that in narrow streets the opposite 
windows nearly met. The rooms, too, were mostly 
small, though some of the outer walls were of 
brick, slate, or tile, frequently covered with plaster 



188 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [X. 

ornamented in elaborate and elegant patterns, and 
traversed by delicately- carved beams and timbers. 

It must be remembered, however, that even the 
citizens of that day led an out-door hfe, and that 
there were not only large and well-kept gardens — and 
some places where the odours of pig-sties, cattle 
lairs, and other accompaniments of a town farmyard, 
were obvious to the senses — but also fields where 
sportsmen could hunt a fox or a hare, as the city mag- 
nates did between St. Clement's and St. Giles', when 
they made theh official inspections of the cisterns and 
conduits between St. Paul's and the City boundary. 

But if the ordinary houses were mean and the 
rooms small and low, the furniture and appointments 
were often luxurious, the tables covered with rich car- 
pets, the walls hung with costly stuffs, the cabinets and 
chests of carved oak, and containing valuable plate 
and stores of goodly hnen and apparel. The houses 
themselves resembled many which may still be seen 
in old country and cathedral to^vns — some of the 
most picturesque at Canterbury, where the creamy 
plaster, covered with arabesque designs, and the 
carved beams and sashes, are perhaps more effective 
than those with yellow plaster and black oaken beams, 
in the neighbourhood of " Carfax," at Horsham. 

One of the best examples of the old houses close 
to Fleet Street, Avas that where, at a later date, Izaak 
Walton lived, near the corner of Chancery Lane, the 
decorated wood-work of which was exceedingly hand- 
some. It was taken down about 1792 or 1793; and 
engravings of it are not uncommon. 




BORDER FROM " THE MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES. 



CHAPTER XI. 

DRAMATISTS, PLAYS AND PLAYERS. 

CoiTiTnon Plays and Players — Children of the Revels— The First Eng-- 
lish Comedy — Udall — Masques — Interludes — John Hey wood — 
Rastell the Printer — Gammer Gurton^ Needle — Gorbodm — 
Sackville at Salisbury House — Classical Learning—" The Mirror 
for Magistrates " — Thomas Norton — Stemhold and Hopkins — 
Origin of the " Old Hundredth " — Performances in the Middle 
Temple — Christopher Hatton — " Gloriana " — Spenser— Raleigh — 
Sidney — The " Arcadia " — Countess of Pembroke — The Eu- 
phuists — Lyly — Campaspe, played by "Her Majesty's 
Children" — Singing and Acting Boys — Opposition to Stage 
Plays — Licences and Privileges to Actors as " Servants " to 
Noblemen — The Earl of Leicester — Burbage's Company and the 
First Theatres -Sir Philip Sidney's Description of the Stage — 
Dramatists and Actors in Fleet Street — Peele— G-reene — Mar- 
lowe — The Young Man from Stratford- on- Avon — Ben Jonson 
on Shakespeare — Absurd Stories about the G-reat Dramatist — 
Aubrey's G-ossip — Testimony from Spenser, Jonson, and other 
contemporaiies — The Theatre in Blackfriars — The Company of 
Players — Ben Jonson in the "Apollo " at the "Devil and Saint 
Dimstan" Tavern — Shakespeare's Early Plays. 

In the early part of the reign of EHzabeth there 
were few of what may be called public buildings, 
except taverns and inns, and there were no theatres 



190 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XI. 

other than the inn yards, m which phxys or inter- 
ludes were presented by small companies of actors, 
who occasionally gave performances of such a profane 
or indecent kind as to bring the offenders before the 
Lord Mayor or some justice of the peace. 

Dramatic performances of a higher character were 
to be seen only in out-door pageants, in the " moral- 
ities," or "masques," provided by the members of 
the Inns of Court or other public bodies, and at the 
royal palaces and mansions of the nobility, on state 
occasions. 

The choristers and boys of St. Paul's School, and 
of Westminster and other schools, as well as of the 
Koyal Chapels, were engaged to sing in the pageants, 
but they did more than this : they performed in 
some of the interludes, and were taught, not only to 
sing, but to play in sacred, and also in classical, 
dramas, the performance of which, as school plays, 
has lasted till our own time at Westminster and other 
ancient "grammar" schools. A number of these 
children were incorporated as an acting company, 
under the name of " The Children of the Revels," and 
among the boys were some who afterwards became 
famous as actors on the stage. 

It has been said that children with good voices 
were sometimes kidnapped to make up the numbers 
required, and it is to be noted that boys and youths 
were needed to play the parts of women, no women 
appearing on the English stage till the end of the 
reign of Charles the First. Even after that time the 
practice continued of employing youths to play 



XL] BEGINNINGS OF THE ENGLISH DRA2IA. 191 

women's characters, for we tincl, by Pepys' Diary, that 
after the Restoration young Kynaston was famous 
for acting female parts, and was such a favourite with 
the ladies who witnessed his performance that they 
used to take him out with them in their carriages 
after the play. 

It would appear that the performance of clas- 
sical plays by boys at the schools led to a depar- 
ture from the former mysteries or interludes to 
something more hke a regular drama; and it is 
remarkable that at first, as the Scriptural plays or 
mysteries were called indifferently "interludes/' and 
"comedies," or " trao-edies," without much reference 
to the meaning which we now attach to the two 
latter titles, so the earliest dramas were, with little dis- 
tinction, called either " tragic comedies " or " comedies." 
It is equally remarkable that the first regular English 
corned}^ was written by Udall, the master of Eton, 
who was employed by Queen Mary to ^viite a Court 
''interlude," or morality play. It is supposed that 
this drama, entitled Ralph Roister Doister, was 
intended by Udall to be performed by the Eton boys, 
and it is so inoffensive in its style and sentiment, 
that, as a kind of satire, to correct vainglory or 
swaggering self-conceit, it is (for that time) an ad- 
mirable example of a school play, containing a good 
deal of quaint innocent fun. 

Originally, the " masque " consisted of dumb show, 
and the " interlude " was spoken drama. A famous 
writer of the latter, in the time of Henry YIII., was 
John Heywood, whose book, " A Hundred Merry 



192 



THE niGHWAY OF LETTEB. 



[XL 



Tales/" was printed by Eastell, of Fleet Street, in 

1525. Eastell; who was ^Titer as well as printer, 

married a sister of Sii' Tliomas More. 

Heywood's writings were very numerous, bnt he 

did not, as we hare seen, originate the regtdar drama, 

and it is now pretty 
well settled that 
Rfilph Roister Doi^- 
ter was the first 
regular comedy, 
though for some 
time the dispute was 
between Udall's 
comedy and a coarse- 
ly humorous and 
exceedingly gi'oss 
play called Gammer 
Miij. Gii rto'ii' s Xe edle, 

once supposed to 

have been written by Bishop Still, on the ground 

that the second act of the piece opens ^4th the 

famous song in praise of ale : — 

•■ I cannot eat but little meat, 
My stomacli is not good — " 

which has been, not imtrtily, called the first chanson 
d hoire in the langtiage. It is supposed, however, 
that this song was introduced into the pla}' as a 
popidar song of the time, and only a portion of it 
actually appears, the complete song having been 
found elsewhere, evidently of a so much earher date 
that it has been attributed to Skelton. 




Fr'in th^i fdle-unge to the In j. 
" ^tLrrorf'/r Maglstratt^ 



XI.^ 



GAMMER GUETOX'S XEEDLE. 



193 



There are some exceedingiy good rough verses 
appointed to tlie cliaracters in G^'mmer GirrfrytV'^ 
Xeedle, of wliicli the motif is the lendino- of the 
needle — a rather rare possession in country places 
in those days — and the relations of the persons con- 
cerned. One of 
the most pictur- 
esque characters 
is Diccon of Bed- 
lam, a Bedlamite, 
or haK-mad beg- 
gar, one of those 
numerous crazy, 
or pretendedly 
crazy, fellows who 
at that time 
roamed the 
coimtry, chanting 
a • kind of rude 
songs, and some- 
times improAising 
jingle-jangles of 
half-nonsense, ^ith here and there a touch of keen 
humour or obseiTation. 

Ro.lplt Roister Doister was certainly in exist- 
ence in 1551, and Gammer Gurtons Xeedle prob- 
ably not long afterwards, and certainly in 1575. A 
later edition of it in 1575 has on the title-page, 
"Played on the stage, not long ago, in Christ's Col- 
lege, Cambridge," giving the author as "Mr. S., Master 
of Arts." 

N 




R.AT.PH EOISTEE DOISTEB. {FiOiii O. Sketch hj 

Holbein in Erasmus's '^Jforia Encomium.^'') 



194 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XI. 

But more important than either of these plays 
was that which was more truly the beginning of the 
English drama. The Tragedy of Gorhoduc, other- 
ivise entitled the Tragedy of Ferrex aiul Porrex, was 
first played in 1561, at the Christmas festivities at 
the ]\liddle Temple, when the Lord of Misrule, other- 
wise the Master of the Revels — Sir Thomas Bangor, 
who had succeeded Sir Thomas Carwarden — rode 
through London " in complete harness, gilt, with a 
hundred horse and gentlemen riding gorgeously with 
chains of gold, and their horses goodly trapped." 
This was in the third year of the reigTi of Ehzabeth. 
A revived taste for classical literature had aheady 
begun, and the printers in Fleet Street were busy 
issumg translations by eminent scholars, one of the 
most famous of whom was Arthur Golding, a Lon- 
doner, who lived in the house of Sir WiUiam Cecil, in 
the Strand. 

Though Gorhoduc, the first tragedy, was performed 
at the Temple in 1561, when many of the Queen's 
Council Avere present, no authorised edition of it was 
printed tiU 1571, when it appeared as Ferrex and 
Porrex. This famous and worthy beginning of the 
regular di-ama was written by Thomas Sackvihe, who 
as we have seen, had come into possession of Salisbury 
House, and was himself one of the members of the 
Middle Temple. 

Sackville, whom Elizabeth afterwards made Baron 
Buckhurst and Earl of Uorset, succeeded Burleigh as 
Lord Treasurer. But his reputation as a scholar and 
a poet had begun when he was a youth at the 



XI.] ['GOBBOBVCr 195 

University, and was confirmed by his " Mirror for 
Magistrates," a series of typical accounts of the lives 
of various historical personages, in the manner of 
Lydgate's " Fall of Princes." Sackville's part of the 
work is distinguished for the remarkable strength 
and purity of the language and imagery, but he 
could not complete a task planned on such an ex- 
tensive scale, and handed it over to Richard Baldwyn 
and George Ferrers, the latter a gentleman and 
scholar, author of some Court interludes, and, as 
already mentioned, Lord of Misrule to Edward YL 
The " Mirror for Magistrates " afterwards received con- 
tributions from various writers, but the powerful and 
dignified commencement by Sackville is the most 
distinguished. 

Gorbocliw, the " argument " of which is from 
Geoffrey of Monmouth's " British Kings/' is in blank 
verse, of so majestic and stately a character that it 
is worthy of the beginning of that form of verse 
which it may be said to have inaugurated, since 
Surrey's previous examples had taken no place in 
the popular estimation. Doubtless, as Charles Lamb 
has said, in his " Comments on English Dramatic 
Poets," Lord Buckhurst supplied the more vital parts 
of Gorhodiic, but he was ably assisted in the opening 
portion of it by Thomas Norton, also a student in 
the Middle Temple, a strict Protestant and a good 
scholar, then about thirty years of age. In the same 
year in which Gorhodiic was produced Norton pub- 
lished a translation of Calvin's " Institutes," and he 
had also been one of the translators who assisted 
N 2 



196 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XL 

Sternhold and Hopkins in their version of the Psalms 
which appeared in the following year (1562) attached 
to the Book of Common Prayer. As an evidence of 
the communion of the Protestant Reformers in Eng- 
land with the Huguenots, it may be mentioned that 
the tune to the 100th Psalm in this version (the 
tune known as " The Old Hundredth ") was one of 
those composed by Goudimal for the French version 
of the Psalms by Clement Marot — a version afterwards 
pretty well known in England, whither it Avas brought 
by the Huguenot refugees, who, after the revoca- 
tion of the Edict of Nantes, followed the earlier 
emigres (Walloons and French), who had settled 
in Canterbury, and there, as elsewhere, began to 
set up the manufacture of bays and seise (baize and 
serge). 

Gorhoduc, which, while it has a certain gran- 
deur of diction, is not in any sense dramatic 
according to our notions of dramatic interest, was 
afterwards performed before the Queen at Whitehall 
by the same gentlemen of the Middle Temple, among 
whom was probably Christopher Hatton. At all 
events, in 1568, we find Elizabeth in Fleet Street, 
at the Temple, to witness a tragedy of Tancred and 
Gisinund, taken from Boccaccio's story, and written 
by five gentlemen of the society, one of whom, the 
author of the third act, is Christopher Hatton, who, 
if not on this, on some other occasion, danced himself 
into the Queen's favour, and became her Majesty's 
Chancellor, the great Sir Christopher, of whom Gray 
says — 



XI.] THE DAXCIXG OHAXCELLOE. 197 

"His bushy beard, and sboe-strings green, 
His high -crowned hat, and satin doublet, 
Mov'd the stout heart of England's Queen, 
Though Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it." 

That Elizabeth loved dancing, and was proud of 
her own proficiency and grace in the " great and 
high '"' manner of saltation then in voo-ue, we have 




PUBLISHEES 3IAEK OX TITLE-PAGE OF THE SECOND PAET OF 
'•THE FAEEIE QTEEXE." 



abeady seen. There is a picture of " Queen Elizabeth 
Dancing" at Penshurst Place, Kent, the mansion of 
the Sidneys, which amuses, if it does not amaze, the 
visitor by the representation of " Gloriana," to whom 
her partner is, as children would say, " giving a 
jump." 



198 TRE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XI. 

Speaking of " Gloriana " suggests Spenser, another 
great Londoner, another haunter of the highway of 
Fleet Street and the Temple, the truest, sweetest, 
purest poet between Chaucer and Shakespeare, richly 
imaginative, but a descriptive rather than a dramatic 
writer. 

Spenser went to Ireland as secretary to Lord Grey 
of Wilton, in that dark and dreadful conflict with the 
emissaries and invaders sent by Pope and Spaniard, 
which ended in a massacre of the foreign inciters to 
rebellion — " a sight to shudder at, not to see." The 
necessity for this deed of blood seems to have been 
demonstrated by Raleigh, and he was deputed 
to carry it out by command of Lord Grey, who 
was apparently jealous of the bold, able, and dis- 
tinguished captain who had begun his public career 
as a volunteer aiding the struggle of the Huguenots 
in France. 

In Ireland Raleigh and Spenser consolidated a 
friendship which was cemented, not only by their 
strong Protestant principles and by their being of the 
same age, but by the accomplishments in versifi- 
cation in which they were sympathetically proficient. 
Spenser's original friend and patron was one whose 
name stands as an example, not only of high and 
delicate chivalry, but of literary achievement, the 
fame of which still lives. Sir Philip Sidney, the 
author of " Arcadia " and " The Defence of Poesie," 
was but thirty-two when he died of the wound he 
received at the battle of Zutphen. We have all 
read the charming anecdote of his handing the 



XI.] SIR PHILIP SIDNUY. 199 

bottle of water, from which he was about to 
drink as he lay bleeding on the field, to the poor 
soldier, who was looking at it with longing eyes, and 
to whom he said, " Thy necessity is yet greater than 
mine. 

Mary, the sister of Sir Philip, was wife of the Earl 
of Pembroke. She outlived him, and her epitaph was 
written by Ben Jonson, in the well-known lines in 
which there is a reference to her son, the young Earl — 

" UnderrLeath this sable hearse 
Lies the subject of all verse — 
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother ; 
Death, ere thou hast slain another 
Learn'd and fair and good as she, 
Time shall throw a dart at thee." 

She was herself an accomplished writer, and the 
brother and sister, who were deeply attached to each 
other, translated the Psalms together into English 
verse. It was for his sister, and at her request, that 
Sidney wrote the " Arcadia." 

Sir Henry (his father), and he also, interested 
themselves in the fortunes of young Edmund 
Spenser. Sir Philip had been in Erance when he 
was little more than seventeen, had been profoundly 
affected by the Huguenot cause, and heartily espoused 
it. He was in Paris during the massacre of the Pro- 
testants on St. Bartholomew's Day, and was obliged 
to seek refuge in the house of Sir Erancis AYalsing- 
ham, the English Ambassador. On his return to 
England, after some months of foreign travel, the 
Queen appointed him ambassador to the Emperor 



200 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



XL 



Kudolph. It was in 1580 that he sought retire- 
ment with his sister at AVilton, where he wrote the 
"Arcadia," for he had remonstrated with the Queen 
against her proposed marriage with the Duke of 
Anjou, and had retired from the Court; but in 1582 

he received the 
^^'^%^^- ^..ro-'> honour of knight- 
hood, and in 1585 
was appointed Go- 
vernor of Fhishing 
and General of 
the troops sent to 
the assistance of 
the United Prov- 
inces. So great was 
his reputation, in- 
deed, that he was 
thought to be a 
suitable candidate 
for the cro^vn of 
Poland, but Eliza- 
beth (probably for 
more than one rea- 
son) objected, and 
would not consent 
to lose " the jewel of her dominions." 

Sidney's " Defence of Poesie " was directed against 
the conceits and affectations of the " Euphuists," the 
followers, and professed followers, of Lyly, whose 
(' Euphues " was said to introduce a new language, 
with its new words, conceits, and periphrases. 




THE EED-CROSS KKiGHT. {Fvom the first 
edition of'''' The Faerie Queene^'' 1590). 



XI.] ''HEB MAJESTY'S GHILDBEN." 201 

It is pretty certain, however, that Lyly himself 
had it in mind to refine and improve the language, 
which in its older form of expression had sometimes 
to be explained by glossaries in the printed editions of 
former books. The excess of fantastic metaphor and 
far-fetched allusion and expression, however, soon 
made it necessary to have an explanation, or glossary 
of new words in the Euphuistic literature. 

We could well forgive Lyly if he had written 
nothing worth preserving but the charming verse 
with which modern readers are familiar, though they 
may not be familiar with the dramas, from the first 
of which, Cwmpaspe, it is taken : 

" Cupid and my Campasjpe played 
At cards for kisses ; Cupid paid. 
He stakes his quiver, bow and arrows, 
His mother's doves, and teams of sparrows ; 
Loses them too ; then down he throws 
The coral of his lip, the rose 
Growing on's cheek (but none knows how), 
With these the crystal of his brow, 
And then the dimple of his chin ; 
All these did my Campaspe win. 
At last he set her both his eyes ; 
She won, and Cupid blind did rise. 
Love ! has she done this to thee ? 
What shall, alas, become of me?" 

Campaspe was played before the Queen by " Her 
Majesty's Children" of the Royal Chapel St. James's, 
and the "Children of Paul's." Philip Sidney, who, 
yet a boy, had taken part in the performance of a 
masque before her Majesty, at Whitehall, had after- 
wards written one — and a very pretty and delicate 
one — for her entertainment. He had been married 



202 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XI. 

only three years, to tlie daugliter of Walsingliam, when 
he died, in 1586. 

Up to 1576, though plays were performed for the 
entertainment of the Queen both at Whitehall and 
other royal residences, and in colleges and halls 
whenever she paid visits to the nobility or to the 
seats of learning, there were no regular theatres 
worthy of the name. Companies of players, like 
the gentlemen or children of the schools and chapels, 
who were kno^vn by the name of their schools, were 
obliged to rehearse their plays to the Master of the 
Revels before performing them. 

Other companies of actors were the " servants " or 
entertainers of various lords and noblemen, whose 
name they took, and who were granted licences for 
them to play in public for their own profit in inn 
yards, town halls, or sheds and barns erected or 
utilised for the purpose. 

From the first the players had to encounter op- 
position from some of the clergy and from the civic 
authorities of London, partly on the alleged score of 
morality, and because the performances were some- 
times held on Sundays and holidays, and partly on 
account of the danger of drawing together a number 
of people during the time of plague or other sick- 
ness. This was the case in" 1563, when above 21,000 
persons died of the plague in London, and Archbishop 
Grindal advised Sir William Cecil to forbid all public 
plays for a year, and (he added) if it were for ever it 
Avould not be amiss. 

But dramatic performances had taken a firm hold 



XL] LEICESTER'S "SERVANTS." 203 

on tlie public taste, and the nobility, even the most 
learned and sober of tbem, went to witness plays 
whenever they were acted in a suitable place, and Avere 
to be performed by actors of known ability. In 1572 
it was enacted that fencers, '• bear- wards,"- common 
players in interludes, and minstrels not belonging to 
any baron of the realm, or to an}' other honourable 
personage of greater degree, should be treated as 
rogues and vagabonds if they had not the licences of 
at least two justices of the peace. 

Two years afterwards the Earl of Leicester obtained 
a special privilege or patent from the Queen for his 
servants, James Burbage, John Perk}^, John Lanham, 
William Johnson, and Robert Wilson, to play inter- 
ludes, comedies, tragedies, and stage plays within the 
City of London and its liberties, or any other city, 
without let, provided that the said plays, etc., were first 
submitted to the Master of the Revels for the time 
being, and that they were not published or shown in 
the time of common prayer or in the time of great 
and common plague in the City of London. The City 
authorities stood out against this order till a letter 
from the Privy Council to the Lord Mayor commanded 
that the players should be admitted to the City 
and otherwise favourably used. Then the Common 
Council frustrated the hopes of the players, by passing- 
regulations that a licence should be obtained from the 
Lord Mayor before each performance, and that half 
the profits should be given up for charitable uses. So 
persistently did the civic authorities oppose the 
players that the matter was long argued between the 




204 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XI. 

Corporation and the Privy Council, till Burbage, in 
1576, bought a piece of ground beyond Bishopsgate, and 
outside the jurisdiction of the City, whereon he built 
" The Theatre " in Holywell Lane, Shoreditch, after- 
wards called the "Curtain 
Theatre," from which the 
" Curtain Road " in the 
same locality took its 
name. 

This was before the 
" Globe," on the south bank 
of the Thames (in 1594), 
the " Rose," built by Hens- 
TAiL-piECE FEOM lyly's ''eu- lowc iu 1584: thc "Paris 

PHUES " (edition of 1579). />. 1 ,, . 1 ' 

Crarden, converted mto 
a theatre at a still later date by Henslowe and Alleyn : 
or the "Swan," in the same locality, drew the rank 
and fashion of the Highway of Letters to the Thames 
wherries, which conveyed multitudes of passengers 
across the river to Southwark on those afternoons 
when plays were performed on Bankside. As the 
population of London was above 150,000, these 
theatres were well supported by audiences who could 
take their pleasure after the usual dinner-hour, at 
twelve or one o'clock, and reach home before night- 
fall. 

The drama was not much assisted, either by 
scenery or costumes, in the earlier days of the regular 
theatre. "Now," says Sir Philip Sidney, "you shall 
see three ladies walk, to gather flowers, and then we 
must believe the stage to be a garden. By-and-bye 




XL] THE PRIMITIVE STAGE. 205 

we hear news of a shipwreck in the same place ; then 
we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock. Upon 
the back of that comes out a hideous monster with 
fire and smoke; then the 
miserable beholders are 
bound to take it for a cave. 
While, in the meantime, 
two armies fly in, repre- 
sented with four swords and 
two bucklers; and then 
what hard heart will not re- 
ceive it for a pitched field?" 

Occasionally there was ~^^ goodI^ephee^* 
so little aid to the imagi- 
nation, that a placard was hung on the front of the 
stage, inscribed with the name of the place in which 
the action was supposed to go on. To give a familiar 
example — 

" The King is set from London ; and the scene 
Is now transported, gentles, to Southampton." 

Or, as sufiicient apology for the want of an army — 

" Can this cock-pit hold 
The vasty fields of France !" Or may we cram 
"Within this wooden the very casques 
That did affright the air at Agincourt ? " 

Many ol the men who had entered the world ot 
letters, and were writing stories and pamphlets for 
the printers in Fleet Street, had begun to see that 
they could appeal more directly to the public, among 

* From the title-page, "The Trueness of the Chi'istian Religion." 
Translated by Sir P. Sidney and A. Golding, 1592. 



206 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XI. 

whom there were still comparatively few buyers and 
readers of books, by writing for the actors. The man 
of letters in those days, and down to a very much 
later period, could scarcely hope to live by his 
writings, unless he secured the aid of a noble or 
wealthy patron ; but the stage, and a successful play, 
promised some immediate if not very great reward, 
with the additional attraction of a certain degree of 
independence. 

Peele, Greene, and Marlowe were already in Fleet 
Street, and printers like Richard Tottell, then master 
of the Stationers' Company, published some of their 
dramas. Marlowe, whose tragedies (wild and ex- 
travagant as some of the language seems to be) dis- 
played marvellous force and splendour of imagery, 
was recognised as the head of the dramatists, and but 
for his erratic life and his early death in a street 
brawl, might have been the companion of men of 
power and influence. 

But in the year when Sidney died (in 1586), when 
Bacon was twenty-six years old, and Spenser and 
Raleigh each thirty-four, a young man was about to 
set out from Stratford-on-Avon who would, by his 
genius, make a new era in the world of letters, and 
whose work would survive that of most, as it trans- 
cended that of every one, of his contemporaries. 
William Shakespeare, who was then twenty- two years 
old, was about to try his fortune in London, and it is 
certain from the evid-ence of his plays, and from the 
knowledge we possess concerning his friends and 
companions, that his were among the most frequent 



XI.] MILTON AND SHAKESPEARE. 207 

footsteps in the Highway of Letters, near which he 
lived and worked, and in the vicinity of Avhich many 
of the persons to whom he introduces us had " heard 
the chimes at midnight." There has always existed 
a well-founded popular recognition of the claims of 
Shakespeare as the greatest of English dramatists, and 
one of the greatest of English poets. Passages from 
his plays have grown into the English language — 
have become aphorisms " familiar in our mouths as 
household words." We use his apt, pungent phrases 
for illustration when we would be witty ; his solemn, 
pathetic language when we would appear to be wise. 
His tender, beautiful metaphors, and strong, sympa- 
thetic references to human hopes fears, and senti- 
ments, come next to the words of sacred Scripture in 
our thoughts Avhen we are stirred by strong emotion. 
It frequently happens that words from a drama of the 
robust and reverent writer of "stage plays" are 
quoted, even by devout people, as those of Holy Writ, 
while it is not uncommon for a text of the poetical or 
epigrammatic portions of Scripture to be attributed 
to Shakespeare. 

When thinking of the wondrous genius of the 
poet, we are most of us ready to say, as Milton said : — 

" Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, 

What needst thou such weak witness of thy name ? 
Thou, in our wonder and astonishment, 
Hast built thyself a lifelong- monument." 

And yet we have, as it were, some sense of the living 
personality of Shakespeare as associated with his plays. 
We can see him amidst the wit-combatants at the 



208 TBE HIGHWAY OF LETTEBS. [XI. 

Mermaid, or at one or other of the taverns in Fleet 

Street, and we think of him as Ben Jonson thought 

who was his boon-companion and admiring friend 

and spoke of him as " Sweet Will " and " My Shake- 
speare," as well as 
eulogising him in 
the lines which 
say : — 

"... How far thou didst 

our Lyly outshine, 
Or sporting Kyd, or Mar- 
lowe's mighty line. 
And though thou hadst 
small Latin and less 
Greek, 
From thence to honour 

thee I will not seek 
For names ; hut call forth 
thundering ^schy- 
EICHAED BUEBAGE. {FroHi the Portrait in lus, 

Buhvich College.) Euripides, and Sophocles 

to us, 
Pacmdus, Accius, him of Cordova, dead 
To live again, to hear thy buskin tread, 
And shake a stage ; or, when thy socks were on, 
Leave thee alone for the companion 
Of all that insolent Greece and haughty Rome 
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come. 
Triumph, my Britain ! Thou hast one to show 
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. 
He was not for an age, but for all time I 
And all the ]\Iuses still were in their prime 
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm 
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm. 
Xatiu-e herself was proud of his designs, 
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines." 

There is something characteristic in big Ben's allusion 
to the " small Latin and less Greek " possessed by the 




XI.] FALLACIES ABOUT SHAKESPEABE. 209 

friend whom he loved " only on this side idolatry," 
for Ben was a great classic scholar, and had brought 
from the UniYersity the list of names that appear in 
his lines ; and he ]nay well haye found the oppor- 
tunity of showing his own acquirements irresistible, 
and at the same time haye thought but httle of the 
classical knowledge possessed by the man whose 
early instrtictions had been those of the Grammar 
School of Stratford-upon-Ayon. 

It is, at the first glance, remarkable that, though 
these striking references to Shakespeare, and to his 
acknowledged eminence as playwright and poet, were 
made by his contemporaries and by distinguished 
writers who succeeded them, more recent popular 
notions concerning his personal history should haye 
been founded mostly on yague stories, or gossiping 
and untrustworthy traditions, some of them adopted 
from supposed references in his own plays to his 
early experiences. It has been insisted that he was a 
ne'er-do-well — a reckless, wild spark, addicted to deer 
stealing, to haunting tayerns, and to ^Titing scurrilous 
verses, and that having fled to London to avoid the 
consequences of his escapades, he gained a precarious 
livelihood by holding the horses of the visitors who 
went to witness the performances at the theatres on 
Bankside ; that he afterwards obtained a footing on 
the stage as a supernumerary actor, and that during 
this time of peniuy he either had in his pocket, so to 
speak, one or more of the marvellous dramas which 
were afterwards to make his transcendent genius 
known to the world, or that the real writer of those 
o 



210 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTEBS. [XI. 

inimitable productions induced him to pretend to be 
their author, and to keep up the fiction for the re- 
mainder of his Hfe. That he rose to fame from a low 
estate, and sordid, if not actuall}^^ vicious, surround- 
ings, has almost always been taken for granted, even 
by some of his most enthusiastic admirers ; and it is 
easy to perceive that these supposed circumstances 
enhanced the estimate which was formed of his ex- 
traordinary ability by those who, like Dr. Johnson, 
accepted, with little question, the illusory and un- 
scrupulous gossip of Aubrey, endorsed, with some 
additions, by later anecdotists and commentators. 

It is of course to be regretted that there exists 
nothing that can be said to be an authentic 
biographical sketch of Shakespeare. In his day 
there was little contemporary biography. Only 
persons of distinction in the State, or having asso- 
ciations with great men or events, had their lives 
written. The " interviewer " had not been discovered 
or invented, and there were no newspapers in which, 
by artfully-concocted paragraphs of personal intelli- 
gence, the name of an eminent author or actor was 
kept before the public, and his fame enhanced by 
means of small-beer chronicles of his daily life. 

It may be said that the conditions by which a 
man can achieve the kind of reputation which con- 
sists in being extensively advertised, scarcely existed 
in Shakespeare's time, and that testimonials and 
complimentary banquets to eminent dramatists and 
players had scarcely been thought of; but there are 
evidences that Shakespeare was satisfied to keep the 



X[.] THE STBATFOBD-UPON-AVON PLAYERS. 211 

even tenour of his way, without seeking to establish 
his fame by contemporary " notices." It would appear, 
from all that Ave can gather of his histor}^, that he 
came to London to try his fortune at the theatres. 
Stratford-upon-Avon had, during his childhood, been 
frequently visited by companies of players, who were 
held in much repute there, and were usually engaged 
by the authorities of the town to perform in the Town 
Hall, or some convenient building, for the amusement 
of the inhabitants. 

It may be remembered, too, that not Shakespeare 
alone, but Burbage, Greene, and one or two other well- 
known actors, with whom he was associated, were also 
Stratford men, and had already begun to prosper 
fairly well, before Shakespeare, with his growing 
marvellous faculty of taking some brief old skeleton 
of a story and making it into a powerful living drama, 
full of human interest, sought to find such work to do 
in London for the purpose of maintaining his young 
family at Stratford. 

His was not an immediate success. He had been 
for some five or six years at work before he achieved 
his purpose, and acquired money enough to retire to 
the place of his birth, after having purchased one of 
the best houses in the town, and enough property in 
adjoining parishes to make him a person of some 
importance. 

In the interval he was a shareholder with Bur- 
bage in the Globe Theatre, and made frequent 
journeys to Stratford. He had achieved much of his 
greatest work before Spenser died, and, like Spenser, 
o 2 



212 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XI. 

had succeeded in rescuing English drama and poetry 
from the triviahties of the Italian writers, whose 
stories were becoming popular, and against whom 
Spenser had raised the English standard which had 
been handed down by Chaucer. 

In " Colin Clout's Come Home Again," where 
Spenser's shepherd describes Elizabeth and the 
famous personages of the Court, the poet does not 
forget Shakespeare : — 

" And there, though last, not least is Aetion. 
A gentler shepherd may nowhere be found, 
AVhose Muse, full of high thought's invention, 
Does like himself heroically sound." 

It is to be noted that Shakespeare was spoken of 
by men of such difterent mental constitutions as 
Jonson and Spenser as " gentle ; " and though it may 
be remarked that the word then often signified " well- 
born," or " well-mannered," it seems to have been also 
intended to express the meaning which we noAv attach 
to it. 

When we desire to know with certainty what was 
the personal appearance of Shakespeare, we are con- 
fronted at first with a difficulty in assimilating the 
several portraits which have been brought forward as 
authentic representations of him ; but even here a 
little inquiry, aided by some references to his con- 
temporaries, pretty well establishes his identity. It 
may be recorded that the " Chandos " portrait, which 
belongs to the nation, and is usually accepted as the 
likeness of " The Bard," and has a very complete 
pedigree, supported by documentary evidence, is in 



XL] 



PORTRAITS OF SHAKESPEARU. 



213 



many respects less satisfactory than the engraving 
which was prefixed to the folio edition of Shake- 
speare's works, published in 1623. This portrait, 
which was the work of Martin Droeshout, has, at all 
events, something in common with the bust of the 
poet in Stratford Church, making allowance for the 




THE GLOBE THEATRE {tcmp. ELIZABETH). 



necessary difference between a print and a coloured 
bust, and considering also that Droeshout is said to 
have taken the likeness when Shakespeare was "in 
character," or, at all events, in the dress in which he 
had played an old man. 

The important authentication of this engraved 
portrait is to be seen in the verse which was written 
by Ben Jonson to be printed under it, as it stood in 



214 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XI. 

the first folio, in the place Avhere we now put the 
frontispiece. The verse was signed " B. J.," and has 
been reprinted in Ben Jonson's works : — 

" To THE EeADER. 

" This figure that thou here see'st put, 
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut ; 
Wherein the graver had a strife 
"With Nature to outdo the life. 
Oh I could he but have drawne his wit 
As -well in hi-asse as he hath hit 
His face, the print would then surpasse 
All that was ever writ in brasse ; 
But since he cannot, Reader, look 
Not on his picture, but his Booke." 

William Shakespeare was a young married man 
with a family, and had been for about four years in 
London, where he had engaged himself as one of the 
company of plaj^ers at the theatre in Blackfriars, 
which had been built in 1576 " by James Burbage" 
and others, at the spot Avhich keeps the name of 
" Playhouse Yard " to the present day. 

This James Burbage, a Stratford-upon-Avon man, 
father of the more celebrated Richard Burbage, 
Shakespeare's subsequent friend and fellow-actor and 
manager, was at the head of that small company 
licensed under a writ of the Privy Seal as servants 
of the Earl of Leicester, " to use, exercise, and occupy 
the art and faculty of playing comedies, tragedies, 
interludes, stage-plays, and such other like as they 
have abeady used and studied, or hereafter shaU use 
and study, as well for the recreation of our beloved 
subjects as for our solace and pleasure when we shall 



XL] TRE THEATRE AT BLACKFBIAIiS. 215 

think good to see them.'" Such a patent was neces- 
sary to prevent actors from bemg arrested or molested 
by the civil authorities, and especially by the civic 
authorities, mider the enactment of the 14rh of Eliza- 
beth, '•' for the pmiishment of vagabonds and the rehef 
of the poor and im23otent;"'" which has been held to be 
a protective Act to distinguish the regularly hcensed 
players and inusicians fr'om rogTies and vagabonds, 
man}' of whom mfested the coimtry imder the guise 
of stroUmg players. The Act was directed only 
against those who could "give no reckoning how he 
or she doth lawfidly get his or her h^Tug. . . All 
fencers, bearwards, common players in interludes, and 
minstrels not belono^ins: to anv baron of this realm, 
or towards any other honourable personage of STeater 
degree ; aU jugglers, pedlars, tickers, and petty chap- 
men : which said bearwards, common players in 
LQterludes, minstrels, jugglers, pedlars, thikers, and 
petty chapmen shall wander abroad and not have 
hcence of two justices of the peace at the least, 
whereof one to be of the cpiorum, where and in what 
shire they shaU happen to wander." 

The Blackfiiars Thtatre was estabhshed amonsr 
the dwellings of pei-sons of distinction, not far from 
the City walls, but in a '• hberty '" not Arithin the 
control of the City othcers. The Lord Chamberlain, 
who does not seem to have objected to it, and Lord 
Hunsdon, who did object to the confrision and dis- 
tui'bance of the carriages taking people to the plav- 
house, were near neighbom-s of the theatre. That 
structure was, in fact, only a portion oi a tenement 



216 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



[XI. 



adapted to the purposes of a theatre, and it was 
known as " The Winter " Theatre, because it was a 
roofed building, whereas the theatres on Bankside 
were summer theatres, only roofed over the stage. 




FROM THE TITLE-PAGE TO ROBERT GREENE'S " GROUNDWORK 
OF CONEY CATCHING." 



and with the auditorium left open to the sky. This 
was really a perpetuation of the theatre formed by 
the old inn yard, where the occupants of the rooms 
opening from the surrounding gallery looked down 
upon the players, who had their stage in the open 
space, where the " groundlings " stood to witness the 
performance. 



XI] 



SHAKESPEABE'S PARTNERS. 



217 



By the year 1589, three years after his coming to 
London, William Shakespeare was not only one of 
"Her Majesty's poor players," but, as one of those 
poor players, was one of the sixteen sharers m the 
Blaclsiriars Theatre — James Burbage and his son 
Richard, John Laneham, Thomas Greene, Robert 




OLD THEATEE CHECK. 



Wilson, John Tajior, Anthony Wadeson, Thomas 
Pope, George Peele, Augustine PhiUipps, Nicholas 
Towby, WiUiam Shakespeare, William Kempe, Wil- 
liam Johnson, Baptiste Goodale, Robert Armyn — 
these are the names in the order in which they 
appear. They were actors (Richard Burbage the 
greatest actor of his time), and several of them 
authors, poets, and dramatists. Some of them are 
still kno^\Ti by their works, but none except Shake- 
speare achieved a fame which " was not for an age, 
but for all time." 

It has been conjectured that Shakespeare's first 
play, the Tiuo Gentlemen of Verona, did not appear 
till 1591. That he made what would now be called 



218 TEE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XI. 

a " sensation " when lie began, first probably to adapt 
and re-cast, and then to write dramas for the theatre 
in which he had been actor, and perhaps assistant to 
Burbage, is shown by the jealous and violent attack 
made upon him by Robert Greene (not Thomas 
Greene) in his " Groats- worth of Wit," a reference 
which Henry Chettle, who published the book after 
Greene's death, soon expressed his regret for not hav- 
ing erased, " Because myself having seen his (Shake- 
speare's) demeanour no less civil than he excellent 
in the qualities he professes ; besides divers of wor- 
ship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which 
argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in enact- 
ing that approves his art." 

By the time that the Blackfriars Theatre was 
rebuilt in 1596, Shakespeare had indeed " approved 
his art." He and Richard Burbage and the rest 
of the sharers in the new undertaking, in peti- 
tioning the Privy Council, called themselves " owners 
and players of the private house or theatre in the 
Precinct, or Liberty, of the Blackfriars." Judg- 
ing from the actual dates at which Shakespeare's 
plays were printed or had been alluded to by other 
writers, several of his dramas had been performed. 
Henry VII. (Part I.) was alluded to by Nashe in 
"Pierce Pennilesse" in 1592. Henry VI. (Part 11.) 
was printed as The First Part of the Contention, in 
1592 : the third part of the same play as The True 
Tragedy of the Diike of York, in 1595. Richard II., 
Richard III. and Romeo and Jidiet were j^i'inted 
in 1597. All these were published in quarto form. 



XL] 



TRIBUTES TO SSAKESPEAEE. 



219 



The Tu'o Gentlemen of Verona, the Comedy of Errors 
(probably in 1592), and, it is supposed, Love s Labour s 
Lost, had been written before these dates. In 1593 
Venus and Adonis had appeared in print, dedicated 
to the young Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southamp- 
ton. Shakespeare himself calls Venus and, Adonis 
"the firstborn of my 
invention," so that it 
was ^mtten some time 
before its pubhcation. 
Lucrece was dedicated 
to the same patron 
in 1594. 

It would be in- 
teresting to trace the 
career of some of the 
intimate friends and 
admirers of Shake- 
speare did space per- 
mit. Of Burbage, the 
chief associate, to 
whose aid and ability 
perhaps Shakespeare, 

and certainly the English drama, owed much, it may 
be mentioned that he left landed estate producing 
three hundred pounds a year, or equal to about one 
thousand two hundred pounds in the present day 
he was buried in the church of St. Leonard, Shore- 
ditch, and the inscription on his tomb is short and 
expressive : — 

" Exit Barljaoe." 




A>-OTHEE ^^:EW OF THE GLOBE 
THEA.TKE. 



220 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XT. 

His memory, like Shakespeare's, was kept green by 
the praise and regard expressed by his contem- 
poraries ; but there is something inexpressibly sweet 
in the tributes to the greater, and, it may be believed, 
the more lovable uian. 

" Sweet Swan of Avon, what a sight it were, 
To see thee in our waters yet appear, 
And make those flights upon the hanks of Thames 
That did so take Eliza and our James," 

wrote Ben Jonson, in his fine verse '' to the memory 
of my beloved, the author, Mr. A¥illiam Shakespeare, 
and what he hath left us." These manly words seem 
to show us what Shakespeare was — to bring before 
us the club at the Mermaid, the companionship in 
the Highway of Letters, with its wit and graceful 
persiflage. They sound the keynote of all the tender 
regret and honest eulogium that followed the name 
and memory of William Shakespeare. 




TAILPIECE TEOM THE ' ' MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES. 




» .^ 






rjl. 



SaiiUsiilc, r'^i^ M I 






PLAX OF BA>'KSIDE EAELY LN' THE SEYEXTEEXTH CENTFET. 



CHAPTER XII. 



THE "separatists" IX BRIDEWELL. 

Early Xonconformists — The Cliurch. formed in Bridewell Prison — 
Persecution of the Separatists — Graol Fever — Fitz — Barrove— 
Greenwood — The Queen's Compunction — Predecessors of the 
Pilgrim Fathers — Preston's Camhyses — Shakespeare's Plays Printed 
— The Impending Fate of Ealeigh — King James on his way to 
London — The Star Chamber — Sir Robert Killigrew and the 
Countess of Dorset in the Fleet Prison — Prosecutions of Printers 
— Secret Publications — Pamphlets and Libels — The Rule of EKza- 
beth and of James I. compared. 

It may be easily understood that among the prisoners 
in the Fleet in the reign of Elizabeth, the Protestant 
Xonconformists, or Dissenters, were amono- those 
who were most harshly treated, and were kept 
longest without trial. The number of them soon 
became so great that the Marshalsea and the Clink, 
in Southwark, would not suffice for the committals. 
A number of these earnest men were in no way 



222 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTEBS. [XII. 

associated with sedition or political controversy, but 
they claimed the right of expounding the Scriptures 
for themselves, and worshipping according to their 
notions of the Primitive Church of the Apostles. 
They were, in fact, advocates of the formation of 
distinct Christian associations or Churches, separate 
from the authority of worldly rulers, so far as their 
religious observance was concerned, and choosing 
their own pastors and teachers, governed by the laws 
of Christ as laid down in the New Testament. 

It seems, therefore, that these were the first 
" Independents " — a name which was not assumed till 
a later date, but one which came to have a striking 
significance when it represented a body of men of 
whom Oliver Cromwell himself was the leader, and 
whose achievements became proverbial, then* swords 
invincible. 

In the days of Elizabeth the English Reformers who 
remained in the Church, though they were disap- 
pointed that the principles of the Reformation were 
not carried out, and who sought by political influence 
to effect the removal from the service book of those 
matters to which they objected, were quite a different 
body from the " Separatists," of whom we have just 
spoken. The latter were called, not only Separatists, 
but " Brownists," a sneering title derived from the 
name of one of their body — a clergyman who, after 
adopting their views, deserted them and accepted a 
living in Northamptonshire. 

The Separatists, however, increased in numbers ; 
they had nothing to do with political expediency ; 



XU: THE FIEST XOXCOXFOBMIST CIirRClI. 223 

tlieir religious convictions liad no connection with 
political disorder ; they professed and practised 
consistent and unswerving lo3^alty to the Crown, 
and 3^et were constantly accused of sedition, which 
the}' utterl}' denied and an}' proof of which they 
repeatedh' challenged. The}' had no stated places of 
worship, for they would not have been suffered to 
meet in them, but in summer they assembled in the 
fields or woods, and in winter in private houses, some 
of which were in the City. For a long time they had 
no pastors, but some of their number " expounded 
out of the Bible so long as they were assembled." 
Their proceedings appear to have been like those of 
the Sandemanians of our own day, of which bod}^ 
Faraday was a constant and devout member. In 1567 
a company of " Separatists," meetmg at Hummer's 
Hall, in Laurence Pountney Lane, were brought be- 
fore the Lord Mayor and committed to Bridewell 
Prison. Here they formed themselves into a regular 
church, and chose a pastor and deacons. Richard 
Fitz, the first pastor, one of the deacons, and many 
of the members, died of gaol fever, or " prison plagTie," 
but the church lived on. 

Other leaders of these primitive Churches, or 
religious associations, were committed to other prisons, 
along ^Yith. felons, murderers, and maniacs. After 
long imprisonment several were executed, with only 
the semblance of a trial. Many of them were men 
of high education and intelligence. Henr}' Barrowe, 
a student of Gray's Inn, and John Greenwood, edu- 
cated for the Church, both scholars of Cambridge 



224 



THE HTGRWAY OF LETTERS. 



[XII. 



University, were at the Clink Prison, in Southwark. 
Barrowe, who was of an aristocratic family in Norfolk, 
had gone to the Clink to see his friend, and found 
himself a prisoner, by order of the Bishop of Win- 
chester, whose ecclesiastical authority and property 
was in the district of Bankside, and Southwark — an 
unsavoury locality morally and physically. There, 




OLD HOUSES AT BANKSIDE, 



amidst foul air, foul companions and privations in- 
tended to subdue them to conformity, the com- 
panions encouraged each other to constancy, and 
wrote on scraps of paper the first treatises of Non- 
conformist literature. These were carried out of the 
prison by a maidservant, to a messenger, who took 
them to Dort, in Holland, where in due time they 
were printed. 

Imprisonment, persecution, death, did not appal 



XII.] 



APPEAL OF THE SEPAEATISTS. 



225 



tliese men. Tliey petitioned, tliey implored the Privy 
Coiincil and Parliament to grant an inquiry, wlien 
they would show that they were neither seditious 




THE ilASSHALSEA Df THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. 

nor disloyal, but only sottght to worship in accordance 
with then- solemn convictions of the teachings of the 
Xew Testament. ■ We are ready to prove oiu' Church 
order to be warranted by the Word of God, allowable 

by her Majesty's laws, and no ways prejudicial to her 

sovereign power Oh : let us not perish 

before trial and judgment, especially imploring and 
cr}'ing otit to you tor the same/' 



226 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XII. 

All was of no use. Continued imprisonment, till 
they died in gaol, barbarous execution, banishment, 
all failed to stamp out the strong convictions of these 
men and their claim for liberty of conscience. Kaleigh, 
with bitter irony, in reply to those who were for rooting 
them out, said, " Root them out, by all means " ; but, 
he inquired, who was to maintain the thousands of 
women and children who would be left destitute at 
their death ? Elizabeth herself was greatly concerned 
at the execution of Barrowe and Greenwood. She de- 
manded of the learned Dr. Reynolds to tell her what 
manner of men they were ; whereupon he answered that 
he was persuaded, if they had lived, they would have 
been two as worthy mstruments for the Church of 
God as had been raised up in that age. The Queen 
sighed, and said no more ; but afterwards, riding to a 
park by the place where they were executed, and 
being willing to take further information respecting 
them, demanded of the Earl of Cumberland, who was 
present when they suffered, what end they made. He 
answered, "A very godly end, and prayed for your 
Majesty and State." It was also declared that the 
Queen demanding of the archbishop what, in his con- 
science, he thought of them, he answered that he 
thought they were servants of God, but dangerous to 
the State. " Alas ! " said she, " shall we put the 
servants of God to death ? " 

So far from their being suppressed and worn out, 
men who sought to convince them by argument were 
converted to their views, joined their body, and be- 
came prisoners rather than abandon their tenets. 



Xir.] "GAMBYSES' VEIN." 227 

The church formed in Bridewell Prison was the pre- 
cursor of other churches or congregations ; and though 
the records of the faithful were mostly prison records, 
and the flocks were undistinguished in the uproar of 
political changes and the struggle for place and 
power — in which Sir Francis Bacon proved that great 
intellect may not be inconsistent with a shrivelled 
moral sense — the indomitable spirit which was after- 
wards displayed by the emigrants to New England was 
awaiting an opportunity for future manifestation.^ 

We have already spoken of the first English 
tragedy. Another play in English, a little later than 
Gorboduc, was Gmnhyses, by Thomas Preston, of 
King's College, Cambridge, whose acting, as well as 
his writing, pleased Elizabeth, when her Majesty 
witnessed the tragedy of Dido performed at Cam- 
bridge University. It is to Preston's play that 
Shakespeare is supposed to have alluded when he 
made FalstafiP, in the First Part of Henry IV., say, 
before pretending to chide the wild Prince Hal, in 
character of his father, "Give me a cup of sack to 
make mine eyes look red, that it may be thought 
I have wept ; for I must speak in passion, and I will 
do it in King Cambyses' vein." The play of Henry 
IV., Part II., was printed in 1600. 

Spenser, who lived to see the success of his friend 
Shakespeare, and of his own supreme work, the 

* In a lecture entitled " An Hour with the Pilgrim Fathers and their 
Precursors," delivered, in 1869, to the Working Men's Educational 
Union, hy the late Mr. Benjamin Scott, Chamherlain of the City of 
London, there is much interesting information on the subject, and to 
that lecture this reference is mainly due. 
p 2 



228 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XII. 

"Faerie Queene," had died at his house at West- 
minster in 1599. The fate of the fiery and impetuous 
Essex had, it was whispered, been a death-blow to the 
Queen, who was abeady smitten with age and the 
cares and sorrows of state, and was nearmg the end 
of her hfe and reign. 

Upon the fearless Raleigh, the friend of the poet, 
the shadow of the prison was about to fall, though 
he knew it not. Another year and the great Queen 
would be numbered with the dead ; James the Sixth 
of Scotland would be trying his best to induce the 
English Council to send the crown jeAvels to him in 
Scotland ; would be asking for money to defray the 
expenses of his slow journey to London ; and would 
be chuckling, in his thick-tongued manner, that in 
England he Avould be no longer under the control 
of the Presbyterian ministers and the factions of the 
Scottish Court, but would make the judges and make 
the bishops — and so make both law and gospel. 

It is not surprising that, under such a rule as that 
of James I., when the Court of High Commission 
of the Star Chamber dealt with cases as it pleased, and 
judges and juries were often suborned by the King, 
with the aid of Ministers whose whole endeavours 
were to su|)ersede each other in the King's favour, the 
Fleet Prison maintained its evil reputation. In 1613 
Sir Robert Killigrew was committed to that " noisome 
place " by the Council for having spoken a few words 
with Su' Thomas Overbury, who called to him while 
he was passing the prison window in the Tower, after 
visiting Sir Walter Raleigh, who had already been 



XII.] JAMES I. AND THE FLEET PRISON. 



229 



long stLut up ttiere. The widow of the Earl of Dorset, 
the Lord Treasurer, who died in 1608, was sent to the 
Fleet for a week or so, for daring to push her way into 
the Council Chamber, " and importuning the King 
contrary to commandment." This was the indignity 




BRIDEWELL . 



which the widow of the famous Thomas Sack^dlle, the 
poet, received fi'om the boastful pedant who kept 
some of the royal printers busy with his arrogant and 
impious treatises on royal authority, and the divine 
right and irresponsible power of Kings. The prisons 
and the executioners were busy m punishing persons 
innocent of crime, long after the guilty conspirators 
of the Gunpowder Plot went on their last dark journey, 
along Fleet Street to the scaffold at the west end of 
St. Paul's Churchyard. 



230 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XII. 

Tlie art of printing in England had fallen, and fear 
of the verdict of the iniquitous and unconstitutional 
Star Chamber made the stationers of Fleet Street 
reluctant to incur line, imprisonment, and ruin ; but 
books, " pamphlets," and " hbels," were secretly pub- 
Hshed, for all that. The pamphlet — the derivation 
of which was said to be from the French jx^r un 
filet — a few printed leaves stitched together with 
thread, but unbound — was just beginning to push 
into influence. The " hbel " was, as its name im- 
phes, onl}^ a little book, not necessarily of a scan- 
dalous or defamatory character. The ^mtten appeal 
or application of a suitor in an ecclesiastical court 
was called a hbel, and the publication of a "libel" 
did not involve an often ce against the law, until 
little books containing matter contrary to the "^-iews 
of the ruling powers were denounced and condemned. 
James was anxious to maintain peace, and in that 
he was right; but a king who did so through 
parsimony and cowardice, and who so truckled to 
Spain that he sacrificed Raleigh to the furious 
demands of Gondomar, who sought the death of 
the distingTiished enemy of his master, could gain 
httle credit from the nation. Xot only men eminent 
for learning and statesmanship, but the common 
people sighed and were angry when they thought of 
the days of the fearless Queen, who had a genuine 
affection for her people, hardly as she had treated 
those who would not conform to the Established 
Church. Her Court was decorous, and distinguished 
for stately courtesy and intellectual culture. She 



XII.] 



TEE 8TTJABT ''KINGCRAFT:' 



231 



could be generous on occasions, but was not extra- 
vagant in her expenditure, either on herself or her 
servants ; and though she granted monopolies to 
favourites, they were not so numerous nor so ill- 
bestowed as those of her successor. Well might 




THE STAE CHAMBER. 



Lord Howard be represented to have said to Harring- 
ton : " Your Queen did talk of her subjects' love and 
affection, and in good truth she aimed well ; our 
King talketh of his subjects' fear and subjection, 
and herein I think he doeth well, too, as long as 
it Jioldeth good." 

James prepared the way for the revolution which 
swept his son Charles from the throne. He wanted 
people even to be merry on compulsion, and ordered 
the " Book of Sports " to be made a manual of 
Sunday observance, under penalties as grievous as 



232 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XII. 

though it had been an ordinance of rehgion. As a 
conceited, unscrupulous bhmderer, he has had few 
equals in misgovernment, and he inherited some 
complicated difficulties with regard to the Noncon- 
formists which led to the emigration of the Pilgrim 
Fathers, and to the unpolitical, but uncompromising, 
Puritanism which, by its patient determination, did 
so much to maintain the resistance before which the 
Stuarts at last disappeared from the throne. 



CHAPTER XIIL 

THE "mermaid/' the ''DEVIL," AND THE "MITRE." 

Shakespeare's Dramas Acted and Printed — Tlie Winter Theatre in 
Blackfriars — Ben Jonson — Tobacco at the Theatres — Randolph — 
The " Bricklayer "—Jonson's Duel— The Children of the Chapel 
— Salathiel Pavy — Fleet Street Shows — Jonson's Plays, Masques, 
and Revels — High Jinks at Court — Heirick — The " Apollo " — 
Leges Conviviales — Dick's — Lilly the Astrologer — The Royal 
Society — The Society of Antiquaries — Sir Hugh Myddelton and 
the New River — Cowley. 

Shakespeare was in the zenith of his fame at the 
accession of James I. • The Merry Wives of Windsor 
had been printed m 1602, and Othello was acted in 
that year. Hamlet was printed in 1603, the year of 
EHzabeth's death, and in the following year Measure 
for Measure was acted at Whitehall, where Kingham 
appeared in 1607, in which year The Taming of the 
Shrew Avas entered at Stationers' Hall, though it is 
believed that it had been acted by Henslowe's com- 
pany in 1593. 

Troihcs and Cressida, having been acted at Court, 
was printed in 1609, and Pericles, one of the doubtful 
plays of Shakespeare, also appeared. In that year, 
Smethwick, the " Stationer " in St. Dunstan's Church- 
yard, printed his edition of Romeo and Juliet, and 
in 1611 his editions of Hamlet. The Tempest and 
A Winters Tale were both acted at Whitehall that 
year. 

The plays of Macbeth, Cymheline, Timon of 



234 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIII. 

Athens, Julius Ccesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and 
Coriolanus are not to be exactly dated, but tbey 
belong to tbe later period of Shakespeare's work, after 
lie bad again taken up bis residence at Stratford. 
He then came only occasionally to London, but was 
well Imown and recognised in the Highway of Letters, 
near which he had his toA^Ti dwelling, havmg, in 
1612-13, purchased a house and appurtenances near 
the Blackfriars Theatre, the indenture for the con- 
veyance of which describes him as William Shake- 
speare, of Stratford-upon-Avon. 

In 1613 Shakespeare seems to have termmated 
his connection with the theatres, so far as any per- 
sonal attendance was concerned, and in that year 
the " Globe " was burnt do^\Ti during the perform- 
ance of his new play, King Henry VIII. We have 
aheady seen that there was a great difference between 
the comparatively rude accessories of the Globe and 
the refinements of the Blackfriars, or Winter, Theatre, 
where plays were performed by candle-light, and 
where, subsequently, there was drapery or a " drop- 
scene," to screen the stage from the audience during 
the preparation of something like appropriate, though 
still very sim^Dle, scenery and furniture. 

It was in the course of an attempt by " The King's 
Players " to produce the drama of Henry VIII. with 
some effect, even to the extent of laying do^vn matting 
on the stage, that the old theatre was destroyed ; but 
it may be hoped there was no serious injury to life or 
limb, for Sh Henry Wotton thus describes the cata- 
strophe : — 



XIII.] EDMUND SHAKESPEARE. 235 

"King Heniy, making a mask at tke Cardinal 
Wolsej^'s house, and certain cannons being shot off at 
his entry, some of the paper or stuff wherewith one 
of them was stopped did light on the thatch, where, 
being thought at first but an idle smoke, and their 
eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly 
and ran round like a train, consuming, within less 
than an hour, the whole house to the very grounds. 
This was the fatal period to that virtuous fabric, 
wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw, 
and a few forsaken cloaks ; only one man had his 
breeches set on fire, that perhaps had broiled him, 
if he had not, by the benefit of a provident wit, put 
it out with bottled ale." 

\Yiniam Shakespeare's young brother, Edmund, 
had come to London fi'om Stratford-upon-Avon, 
and was known to Alle}TLe, Henslowe, and the 
actors: in 1607 he died, at the age of twenty- 
seven, and was buried in the church of St. Mary 
Overy. 

William Shakespeare himself was m London in 
November, 1614, and probably he was then engaged 
in settling some law business in relation to his 
property. In March, 1616, less than a month before 
his death, he executed the will which has long been a 
famous rehc, and in which his house in Ireland Yard, 
near the Blackfriars Theatre, is mentioned ; the site of 
the theatre being, as we have said, known as Playhouse 
Yard. 

That the Blackfriars was a fashionable theatre is 
on record in repeated instances. There was an open 



236 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



[XIII. 



space in front '' to turne coaclies in," and Ben Jonson, 
who not only played there, but in 1607 dates his 
dedication of Volpone, or the Fox, "from my house 
in the Blackfriars/' speaks of the theatre in another 




MAEY OVEEY. {Fro/;i (oi Etching by Hollar, 1647.) 



play, The Devil is an Ass, where one ot the charac- 
ters says : — 

"Here is a cloak cost fifty pound, wife, 
Which I can sell for thirty, when I have seen 
All London in't, and London has seen me. 
To-day I go to the Blackfriars Playhouse, 
Sit in the view, salute all my acquaintance ; 
Rise up between the acts ; let fall my cloak ; 
Publish a handsome man and a rich suit." 

There was no " dress circle " at that time, the noble 
patrons of the drama, the lords and gentlemen, sitting 
on stools upon the stage, and talking, smoking, or 



XIII.] AN AUDIENCE AT THE PLAY. 237 

eating oranges between the acts. The rage for tobacco 
in the latter part of the reign of EHzabeth extended 
even to the ladies, who not imfreqnently indulged in 
the weed — though not often in public. Whether one of 
James I.'s antipathies to Kaleigh was that he had been 
credited with first introducing the vile Stygian practice, 
it would be difficult to say, but that the King was a 
sworn foe to the practice of smoking — and published 
and printed a " Counterblast " — everybody knows, as 
well as he knows that even the monarch who vowed 
he would have everybody think alike in religion, 
could not put out the pipes of his subjects. 

The provision of seats upon the stage and of pipes 
and ale, oranges and nuts, for the gallants who showed 
themselves there to the masked or unmasked ladies 
in the parterre, as the French used to call the re- 
served part of the "auditorium," lasted even to the 
end of the reign of Anne, if not later. 

The Blackfriars Theatre remained in the hands of 
the sons of Burbage, who, in 1633, leased it to the 
players for £50 a year, but in 1655 the building was 
pulled down and ordinary tenements took its place. 
As late as 1638 references to the opposition to the 
theatre by the Puritan dwellers in the locality were 
made by the satirists, especially as the said objectors 
carried on trades which were themselves open to 
objection on the ground of ministering to frivolity. 
Thus, in Randolph's Muses Looking Glass, published 
1586 — Mrs. Flowerdew says : — 

' ' Indeed, it sometimes pricks my conscience 
I come to sell 'em pins and looking glasses." 



238 THE HIGBWAY OF LETTERS. [XIII. 

To which Mr. Bhd rephes : — 

" 'Tis fit that we, which are sincere professors, 
Should gain hy infidels." 

The whole precinct, however, which may be called 
the entrance to the Highway of Letters, was dis- 
tinguished for famous inhabitants, do^vn to the time 
when, in 1735, its privileges of being outside the civic 
jurisdiction ceased, and it became a part of the Ward 
of Farringdon Within. Thi'ee famous artists lived 
there — Isaac Oliver, the miniature painter, who died 
in 1617, and was buried in St. Anne's, Blackfriars ; Sir 
Anthony Van Dyck, the famous friend and admired 
royal painter to Charles I. ; and Cornelius Jansen, 
who dwelt there for many years. Fancy the erect 
and elegant figure of Van Dyck, with lace and ruffles, 
going down Fleet Street to Whitehall. He stuck 
to his house m Blackfriars for the whole time that 
he was in England, from 1632 to his death, in 1641, 
and the rental was estimated at about £20 a year. His 
daughter, Justinia, was born there, and was baptised 
in St. Anne's church on the day of her father's death. 

More gloomy is the association of the Earl and 
Countess of Somerset with Blackfriars. There they 
lived when the murder of Sh Thomas Overbury stung 
the nation into resentment against James and his 
abominable favourites. 

As to Ben Jonson, he laid the scene of one of his 
best knoAvn plays — The Alchemist — as it were at his 
own door; but we must say a word or two more 
about him, for durinof the reioii of the first Stuart in 



XIII.] BEisr JONSoy at school. 239 

England he was a brilliant representatiYe of the 
Highway of Letters, and was one of the most pictur- 
esque exponents of its varied life and character. 

In the year 1575 there was living in Hartshorne 
Lane, the steep and narrow turning near the end of 
the Strand, now called Northumberland Street, a 
respectable woman, the wife of a master bricklayer. 
She had married him when she was a widow, with 
one child — a boy born after his father's death and 
christened with the name of Benjamin — thereafter to 
be known to the world as " Ben " — Ben Jonson. His 
grandfather, who was a man of good family and some 
property, had moved fi'om Annandale, in Scotland, to 
Carlisle, and was afterwards in the ser^dce of Henry 
YIII. His father was one of those who, in the reign 
of Mar}', were persecuted and deprived of their estates ; 
and afterwards he entered into holy orders as a 
Protestant clerg}'man, and became " a grave preacher 
of the Gospel." The child, Ben Jonson, was born in 
Westminster. His mother, on her second marriage, 
removed to her husband's house in Hartshorne Lane, 
and the bo}' was sent by his stepfather to the school 
attached to the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 
and gave so much evidence of ability that a former 
friend of his father helped to send him to Westminster 
School, where the learned Camden was second master, 
and took gTeat pams with a scholar whom he found 
so apt and assiduous. 

Young Ben soon reached the upper form in the 
famous school, and in later years warmly acknowledged 
his deep obligations to his master — 



240 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIII. 

" Camden, most reverend head, to whom I owe 
All that I am in arts, and all I know." 

And in the dedication of Every Man in his Humour, 
years afterwards, he assures his ''most learned and 
honoured friend " that he is " not one of those who 
can suffer the benefit conferred upon his youth to 
perish with his age." 

It is beheved that he obtained a scholarship or 
exhibition for the University of Cambridge, and that 
the friend who had previously sent him to West- 
minster helped him. Fuller says he was " statutably 
entered at St. John's College." That the lad had 
distinguished himself in learning cannot be doubted. 
We afterwards find him saying, according to Drum- 
mond of Hawthornden, whom he visited as a friend, 
but who does not appear to have spoken of him in a 
very friendly spirit, " He was Master of Arts in both 
the Universities — by their favour, not his studies," 
which seems to suggest that though, because of 
the Avant of means of support, he left College with- 
out taking any degree, he afterwards had degi'ees 
conferred upon him by both Universities. This also 
seems to be indicated by his dedication of Voljyone 
to " the most noble and most equal sisters — the two 
Universities." 

AVhen, having left Cambridge, he appeared one 
night at the door of the house in Hartshorne Lane, 
footsore, weary, shabbily clothed, and with a look of 
want and suffering, he had grown to be a tall, 
strongly-built and rather clumsy youth, with a 
rugged but capable-looking face, and a determined 



XIII.] BOOILS AND BBIGKLAYING. 241 

manner. His motlier's strong desire that he should 
become a famous scholar, perhaps a parson, could 
not then be fulfilled. His own ambition, with his 
strong aversion to the business of bricklaying, was 
set aside, for he had come home — walking all the 
way from Cambridge — to earn a living by working at 
the only occupation then open to him. 

Building was going on at Lincoln's Inn, and his 
stepfather was employed in setting up the new wall 
that was to surround the garden. There Ben was 
put to work for which he had little ability and 
still less taste, and there he was seen in the dinner- 
hour, or at stolen moments, reading a Greek or 
Latin book, which he carried in his pocket. He 
was about eighteen years old when, finding that 
he could no longer endure the occupation by which 
he had to earn his bread, he went, as a volunteer 
recruit, to join the English force Avhich had been sent 
to the Low Countries to oppose the Spanish invasion. 

He seems to have done soldierly service, and some 
references to his military experience indicate that he 
engaged in single combat with an antagonist, whom 
he slew ; but the expedition was not one in which to 
gain much honour or much pay, and inteUigence of 
the death of his stepfather hastened young Ben 
Jonson's return, lest his widowed mother should 
be left destitute and unprotected. AAThether he 
attempted to continue the bricklaying business is not 
clear. It is not likely that he would have scorned 
it, for he probably held the opinion, afterwards 
expressed by FuUer, in speaking of the rivals who 



242 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIII. 

derided "the bricklayer/' "let not those blush who 
have, but those who have not, a lawful calling." 

That he quickly turned his attention to the stage 
is clear enough, for there are numerous records of his 
" writing up " certain dramas, or providing plays and 
characters for Henslowe; and in 1596 he commenced 
a career in which, a year afterwards, he appeared as 
actor as well as dramatist at the Rose, at Bankside, 
in which he held a share. In this year Every Man 
in His Humour was produced, with Italian scenes 
and characters, but he re-wrote it, making it entirely 
English, and laying the scene in London, in the 
neighbourhood including Coleman Street and Hox- 
ton, with which he was well acquainted, from his 
association with the Curtain Theatre when he played 
" Jeronimo " in Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, and "WTote for 
Henslowe a new scene. 

He was still exceedingly poor, and like some other 
poor authors and dramatists, including Shal^espeare, 
had married without much prospect of maintaining 
his wife, not to speak of his mother ; but in its new 
form Every Man in His Humour was played by the 
company of which Shakespeare, then achieving his 
great success, was a member, and Shakespeare him- 
self was one of the performers in it. 

It was not till later in life that Jonson, who was 
ten years younger than Shakespeare, attained to the 
social celebrity or the burly Falstaffian proportions 
with which we mostly associate him. At the time of 
his earlier successes he was a tall, gaunt, large-boned 
young man, with eyes full of eager intelhgence, and a 



XIIL] DUEL OF JONSOX .l.YD SPENGEB. 243 

face strongly marked and scarred, either li*om the 
effects of small-pox or some scorbutic affection. 
When he later spoke of his "mountain belly" and 
his "rock}' face/' he had not much improved in 
appearance, but his countenance had always in it 
the light of genius and the glow of good-fellowship. 
It was in 1598 that he fell into trouble, in conse- 
quence of a quarrel ^^^th an actor — one of Henslowe's 
compan}^, named Gabriel Spencer — who challenged 
him to a duel, which Avas fought in Hoxton Fields ; 
Spencer's sword was ten inches longer than that of 
Jonson, who was severely wounded in the arm, but slew 
his adversary, and was committed to prison, and, as he 
says, " brought near the gallows." A letter of Hen- 
slowe, apparently written in a bitter temper, probably 
at the loss of one of his company who was, perhaps, 
a personal friend, ssljs to his correspondent, "Since 
you weare mth me, I have lost one of my company, 
which hurteth me greatly, that is Gabriell, for he is 
slay en in Hogesdon fields by the hands of bergemen 
Jonson, bricklayer." There seems to be a touch of 
spite in the " bergemen," which is hke a conversion of 
Benjamin to " Bargeman," and in the " bricklayer," 
which was so often used as a term of reproach to the 
poet. It may be possible that the quarrel mth 
Gabriel Spencer arose from some such expressions 
being used ; but nothing more is knoAvm of the par- 
ticulars, except from the burial register of St. Leonard's, 
Shoreditch, where we learn that m " 1598. Gab- 
riell Spencer being slajme, was buryed y'^ xxiij^^ of 
September," and that he was of "Hogge Lane," a 
Q 2 



244 TEE HIGHWAY OF LETTEES. [XIII. 

thorouo'hfare tlien leadino' from Norton Folo-ate to 

O o o 

Bimhill Fields. 

Thus Jonson's first great success was followed by 
a calamity which might have put an end to his 
career in more ways than one, for he was visited in 
prison by a Popish priest, by whose persuasions he 
became a Roman Catholic, a change which he only 
recanted twelve years afterwards. 

This visitation by the priest was, in fact, the 
greater peril, for it would seem that the prosecution 
for the result of the duel was abandoned ; but his 
communications with the priest were watched and 
listened to by spies, and had he not been put on his 
guard by the gaoler he would probably have been 
led on to some incautious remark which might have 
been made a serious matter. The numerous emissaries 
who, it was beheved, and in man}^ cases proved, were 
engaged in plots to assassinate or poison Queen 
Elizabeth, caused constant alarm and suspicion, and 
for a prisoner like Jonson to be visited by a priest 
was regarded as a reason for endeavouring to entrap 
him into admissions that might be used against him. 

Ben Jonson soon rose to a fame which, though it 
scarcely approached that of Shakespeare, and has not 
continued and increased in later times as Shake- 
speare's has, outlived, in general popularity, that of 
Marlowe, Chapman, and of his contemporaries Dekker^ 
John Marston, and his later friends, Webster, Mas- 
singer, Ford, and Shirley, if not of Beaumont and 
Fletcher. 

The earnestness, the descriptive power, and the satire 



XIII 



BEX JO X SOX IX PEISOX. 



245 



of Ben Jonson were more appreciated in the later days 
of Elizabeth than thev were a few years after the 
accession of James, when the tone of the Comt was 




THE FIXET DirC] 



lowered, and the general corruption extended, not 
only to pohtical btit to social hfe. The inlltience 
which the depression of manners and morals had 
upon the drama soon became apparent. Appreciation 
of the higher comedy declined, and the theatre no 



246 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIII. 

longer represented national taste, since the oj)position 
of the greatly increasing number of Puritans to the 
low and degrading taste of the Court extended to 
theatrical representations, which showed something of 
the same depraved inclination. 

At the accession of James, Shakespeare was the 
greatest living writer. His dramatic company be- 
came " the King's Players." The Children of the 
Chapel, Y/ho became "the Children of His Majesty's 
Revels," acted Ben Jonson's Poetaster and his 
Cynthia s Revels at the Blackfriars Theatre. The 
latter was printed in 1601, having been first acted in 
1600, three years before the death of Elizabeth. The 
names of the children (boys) who performed it were 
Nat Field (who afterwards became dramatist as well 
as actor), Salathiel Pavy, Thomas Day, I. Underwood, 
Rob Baxter, and John Frost. On one of these 
(Salathiel Pavy, who died young), Jonson wrote the 
tender epitaph often quoted, of which the following 
four verses may be remembered : — 

" Weep witli me, all you tliat read 
This little story ; 
And know, for whom a tear you shed. 
Death's self is sorry. 

" 'Twas a child that so did thrive 
In grace and feature, 
As Heaven and Nature seemed to strive 
Which owned the creature. 

" Years he numbered scarce thirteen, 
When fates turned cruel ; 
Yet three filled zodiacs had he been 
The stage's jewel. 



XIII.J JONSOX AS A WRITER OF MASQUES. 247 

" And did act (what now we moan) 
Old men so duly, 
As soon the Parcse thought him one, 
He played so truly." 

Jonson would never stoop to write down to the 
taste of a debased audience — would never cease to 
satiiise vice and hj^ocrisy, or to sIlow his high regard 
for honour and virtue. He was impartial in his 
brilliant pictures of the time, whether he pourtrayed 
the braggart, the dissolute and the effeminate, or the 
hypocritical and sanctimonious, in the broad humour 
of his Bartholomeiu Fair or in the more subtle strain 
of some of his other dramas. 

His two tragedies, Sejanus and Catiline, were 
printed respectively in 1605 and 1611. In 1613 he 
went to France as tutor and companion to the son 
of Su' Walter Raleigh, and on his return wrote 
Bartholomeiu Fair, and in 1616 his comedy The Devil 
is an Ass. This was the year of Shakespeare's death, 
and in the same year Jonson published a foho volume 
intended to be the first volume of his collected works, 
including plays, poems, and epigi'ams. He wrote no 
more for the public stage during the reign of James I., 
but devoted himself to those elaborate and elegant 
Court masques, in which he found delightful oppor- 
timity, not only for the display of his classical scholar- 
ship, but for his lively wit and exuberant fancy. He 
was no novice in this sort of composition, for, in 1603, 
he and Dekker had composed a masque, or spectacle, 
for the City magnates, to celebrate the accession of 
the King, and to be performed in the hall of the 



248 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



[XIII. 



Merchant Taylors' Company. Sir John Swynnerton 
was "entreated to confer with Master Benjamin Jonson, 
the poet, about a speech to be made to welcome his 
Majesty, and about music, and other inventions, which 
may give liking and delight ; by reason that the 




THE TEMPLE IN 1671. 

Company doubt that their schoolmasters and scholars 
be not acquainted with such kind of entertainments." 
The Queen (Anne of Denmark) had already wit- 
nessed the first masque written by Ben Jonson, while 
she was staying at Althorpe, with her eldest son, 
before following the King to London. The name of 
it was The Satyr, and Jonson had prepared it for the 
occasion, by request of Sir Robert Spencer. Doubt- 
less this had some effect on Jonson's fortunes, 
for her Majesty doted on these shows, especially 



XIIL] JONSON'S MASQUES. 249 

when she took a part in them, Avhich gave her an 
opportunity of dancing. James himself, pedantic, 
and yet coarse in his tastes, had enough learning to 
appreciate the poet's classic allusions, and enough 
wit to laugh at his satirical conceits. 

Jonson was so fearless and impartial that he did 
not hesitate to loose his shafts of satire at the Court, 
and Queen Elizabeth had doubtless enjoyed the 
brightness of the humour that lighted the foibles of 
her friends. So did James, in his clownish way ; but 
when he detected in Eastivard Ho ! — written by Chap- 
man, Martin, and Jonson — what he thought was a "skit" 
upon Scottish courtiers, he clapped all three poets 
into prison, and there was some fear that they might 
have their ears cut off, or their noses slit. They were 
only detained for a short time, and, on their release, 
Jonson gave an entertainment to his friends, at which 
his mother " drank to him, and showed him a paper, 
the contents of which she designed, if the sentence 
had taken effect, to have mixed with his drink, and it 
was strong and hasty poison. To show that she was 
no churl, she designed to have first drank of it herself." 

This was in 1605, and it is a strange and grim 
illustration of the dangers that beset men in the 
Highway of Letters under the new despotism ; but 
either the poet and his friends had some influence at 
Court, or James himself thought it would not be to 
his advantage to punish so well-known and popular a 
poet as the accomplished designer of Court entertain- 
ments, in which the highest personages were likely to 
be the performers. 



250 TEE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIII. 

The contemporary biographical references to Jon- 
son's early life are often misleading, and sometimes 
disparaging, for he was regarded with no little 
animosity by many of those who saw in him a for- 
midable rival, and were ready to bespatter him with 
epithets and to mahgn his character. Independent, 
outspoken, and doubtless having a "hate of hate 
and scorn of scorn " for those who assailed him, but 
evidently of a warm, generous, and forgiving nature, 
" the bricklayer," as his opponents were fond of 
calling him, needs no better evidence of ability than 
is afforded by the letters addressed to him by his 
admiring friend, the learned Selden, and the affec- 
tionate expressions in the verses of those companions 
who admired and loved him, companions who, hke 
Beaumont and Fletcher, were themselves successfully 
engaged in the same pursuits, and were his constant 
associates. 

Fuller, the accomplished historian and divine, 
another admirer of Ben Jonson, came later to the 
Highway of Letters, for it was not till after the cause 
of Charles the First was ruined that he, who had 
been a supporter of the royal authority, was chosen 
lecturer of St. Bride's, Fleet Street ; but Fuller's ac- 
curacy may mostly be taken for granted, and his 
" Worthies of England " is one of the quaintest and 
most interesting books of reference now in use. His 
memory for the records of personal history make it 
valuable ; and that memory was itself so remarkable 
for accuracy that it was declared he could tell, in their 
exact order, the signs that were over the tradesmen's 



XIII.] FULLER, MA8SINGEE, WEBSTER 251 

doors after once walking between Temple Bar and 
the Royal Exchange. 

One can scarcely part from the contemporaries of 
Jonson in Fleet Street without referring again to 
Massinger, whose New Way to Pay Old Debts and 
The City Madam are probably better known to-day 
than most of Jonson's own plays. Nor must we omit 
to mention John Webster, tailor and parish clerk of 
St. Andrew's, Holborn, who was a poet of no mean 
achievement, as his Duchess of Malfi, with its mastery 
of tragic intensity, will prove. 

The masques and Court entertainments in the 
early part of the reign were so frequent, and often 
so magnificent, that Jonson was in pretty constant 
and remunerative employment, often receiving con- 
siderable presents from the King and from noblemen, 
at whose country houses he Avas a frequent visitor, for 
the purpose of designing such representations. The 
masque, indeed, w^as at its zenith in the time of 
James, and declined at the end of his reign, never 
to be revived in its former splendour. 

Bacon, the learned Solicitor-General and Clerk of 
the Star Chamber, designed, in February, 1613, a 
masque of the Marriage of the Thames and the Rhine, 
for the gentlemen of Gray's Inn, to celebrate the 
wedding of the Princess Elizabeth and the Elector 
Palatine : and in his essay on " Masques and 
Triumphs" we have his opinion, that "it is better 
they should be graced Avith elegancy than daubed 
with cost. Dancing to song is a thing of great state 
and pleasure," and he advocates " choirs, placed one 



252 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIII. 

over against anotlier, scenes abounding with light, 
colours of white, carnation, and a kind of sea-water 
green, graceful suits, not after examples of known 
attires, sweet odours suddenly coming forth." 

He had doubtless seen the stately and sumptuous 
performances designed by Ben Jonson, who continued 
always to be an admirer of the great attainments and 
the consummate ability of the man who, had he been 
less ambitious and grasping, would have left a nobler 
name, more consistent w^ith his profound and varied 
knowledge. 

It was not always that James and his Queen could 
rise to the refinement of Jonson's graceful inventions. 
There was a frequent tendency to excess in eating 
and drinking, to vulgar romping and ill-concealed 
familiarity in some of the Court entertainments^ 
This was manifested when the visit of the Queen's 
brother, the King of Denmark, was the occasion 
for a round of festivities which cost the nation a 
considerable sum of money, without increasing re- 
spect for the King. The royal visitor, who took 
up his abode at the Queen's House (Somerset 
House — which had been re-named Denmark House 
by order of James), was, so to speak, the imme- 
diate neighbour of the leading men in the High- 
way of Letters, for Fleet Street was then the very 
centre to which the followers and admirers of litera- 
ture and the drama were attracted; but the enter- 
tainments which seem to have been prepared for his 
reception were far below the level of the elegant taste 
of the dwellers in the Temple and other Inns of Court. 



XII L] SIB JOHN HARRINGTON. 253 

The masque, described by Sir Jolin Harrington 
in a letter to the secretary, Barlow, on that occasion, 
was not such as would have commended itself either 
to Bacon or Jonson. Sir John wrote : — 

" One day a great feast was held, and after dinner 




SOMERSET HOUSE AXD STAIRS, AS THEY APPEARED BEFORE BEI^^G 
PULLED DOWN IN 1776. 



the representation of Solomon, his temple, and the 
coming of the Queen of Sheba was made, or (as I 
may better say) was meant to have been made before 
their Majesties, by device of the Earl of Salisbury 
and others. But, alas ! as all earthly things do fail 
to poor mortals in enjoyment, so did prove our pre- 
sentment thereof. The lady who did play the 
Queen's part did carry most precious gifts to both 
their Majesties; but forgetting the steppes arising 
to the canopy, overset her caskets into his Danish 



254 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIII. 

Majestie's lap, and fell at his feet, though I think it 
was rather on his face. Much was the huny and 
confusion ; cloths and napldns were at hand to 
make all clean. His Majestie then got up, and would 
dance with the Queen of Sheba: but he fell down 
and humbled himseh before her, and was carried 
to an inner chamber, and laid on a bed of state^ 
which was not a little defiled with the presents of 
the Queen, which had been bestowed on his garments, 
such as wine, cream, jelly, beverage, cakes, spices, and 
other good matters. The entertainment and show 
went forward, and most of the presenters went back- 
ward or fell do^vn — wine did so occupy their upper 
chambers. Now did appear, in rich dress, Hope, Faith, 
and Charity. Hope did essay to speak, but wine ren- 
dered her endeavours so feeble that she withdrew, 
and hoped the King would excuse her brevity. 
Faith was then alone, for I am certain she was not 
jo}med to good works, and left the Court in a stagger- 
ing condition. Charity came to the King's feet, and 
seemed to cover the multitude of sins her sister had 
committed ; in some sort she made obeyance, and 
brought giftes, but said she would return home again, 
as there was no gift which Heaven had not aheady 
given his Majestie. She then returned to Hope and 
Faith, who were both sick ... in the lower hall. 
Next came Victory, in bright armour, and presented 
a rich sword to the King — who did not accept it, but 
put it by with his hand — and, by a strange medley of 
versification, did endeavour to make suit to the 
King. But Victory did not triumph long, for, after 



XIII.] COUNTRY SQ.UIBES IN FLEET STREET. 255 

much lamentable utterance, slie was led away like a 
silly captive, and laid to sleep on the outer steps of 
the ante-chamber. Now did Peace make entry, and 
strive to get foremoste to the King ; but I grieve to 
tell how great wrath she did discover unto those of 
her attendants ; and much contrary to her sem- 
blance, made rudely Avar with her olive-branch, and 
laid on the pates of those who did oppose her 
coming." 

The graphic and vivid pictures of the fashions and 
manners of the time to be found in the plays and 
verses of Ben Jonson are incomparable, for the poet 
had not only keen observation, but he dwelt, so to 
speak, in the central resort of people of every grade, 
and his area of observation chiefly included the Cit}^ 
between Temple Bar and Finsbury fields, with Fleet 
Street and St. Paul's as the representative trysting 
places. The Cathedral was more than ever the 
lounge and promenade of the idle and, it may also be 
said, of the dissolute, and the follies and eccentricities 
of fashion were daily to be witnessed there. 

During the law terms Fleet Street and its vicinity 
was often crowded with country gentlemen ; and the 
knight or squire seldom came singly, for his whole 
family were equally eager to gaze upon the marvels 
and enjoy the pleasures of the metropolis. This 
desu'e frequently added so greatly to the throng in 
the streets, and set such an example to country 
people of the poorer sort to resort to London_, where 
they might find employment, that James and his 
successors endeavoured to pass laws against the 



256 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



[XIII. 



increase of houses, and the royal displeasure was 
pronounced against the country gentry who came 
to enjoy the stir and diversions of the metropolis, 
leaving their tenants and dependents to look after 
their estates in the shires. 




THE BOLT-IN-TUN, 1869 (p. 269). 

It need hardly be said that in Fleet Street, where 
the visitor found some attractive show, amusing- 
entertainment, or alluring tavern, at every few yards 
of his progress, there were cheats and knaves lying 
in wait to rob or swindle him ; and the methods of 
" Coney catching " were pretty freely explained by 



XIII.] THE FOE TRY OF FLEET DFTCH. 267 

Robert Greene in a book with that title pubhshed 
in three parts, and also in his " Notable Discovery of 
Coosnage/' and " The Gull's Horn Book." 

As to the shows in Fleet Street, Jonson's allusions 
to them are so significant that most of them have 
been quoted in connection Avith his plays, especially that 
in Every Man Out of His Hiimowr, where Sogliardo 
says : " They say there's a new motion* of the 
City of Nineveh, with Jonas and the whale, to be 
seen at Fleet Bridge ; you can tell, cousin ? " To 
which Fungoso replies : " Yes, I think there be such 
a thing ; I saw the picture." 

As frequently have been quoted his lines depict- 
ing the condition of the Fleet, already called Fleet 
Dyke, or ditch — lines recording the extraordinary 
freak of Sir Ralph Shelton and a Mr. Heyden, who, 
in a roAv-boat, made the voyage from Bridewell to 
Holborn : — 

" All was to them the same; they were to pass, 
And so they did, from tStj'x to Acheron, 
The ever-boiling- flood, whose banks upon 
Youi* Fleet Lane furies and hot cooks do dwell, 
That with still- scalding streams make the place hell ; 
The sinks run grease, and hair of meazled hogs, 
The heads, houghs, entrails, and the hides of dogs, 
For, to say truth, what scullion is so nasty 
To put the skins and offals in a pasty ? " 

The catalogue of revolting pollutions Avas very 
little diminished for a century afterAvards, and Fleet 
Ditch Avas a theme for successive satirical poets, down. 

* Mechanically acting figures ; a " puppet show." 



to dig time ck: -— _- \^: : 3 -; -.1 ji t.^::^ 

<ii(WJMintdartTifiiffiy zi __: _ .1. . - — -- - — 

disk aoid din^ iffldlL jB&nl&AMti ^ — 



Bu; at ;a 



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T^mr pooc, iKiea vge^iinfr soefi. saml sr:=_i z: :_ 
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<Qf jmnagintttTie J£eatii i ii>. arad no(t m :i of 



XIIL] A GALAXY OF POETS. 259 

diTinken revels. Such low excess would liave been 
destructive of tlie ybtj spiiit of good-feUowsliip, 
and would have been inconsistent with the distinc- 
tion which was achieved by such men as Beaimiont, 
Fletcher, and Randolph, the author of -The Muses' 
Looldng Glass." 

Jonson had been one of the chosen convives of 
the company of wits and poets who, with Shake- 
speare, Raleigh (traditionally), Selden, Beaumont, 
Fletcher, Cotton, Carew, and others well known 
in the Highway of Letters, used to meet at the 
MeiTuaid Tavern, which seems to have stood near 
Cheapside, with entrances both in Bread Street and 
Fiiday Street. 

Among the verses devoted to Ben Jonson by his 
friends, including the distinguished Chapman, Donne, 
Francis Beaumont (who calls him '"my dear friend 
and master '"), James Shhley, Fletcher, George Luc}', 
Heyward (the famous lawyer), Nat Field (to his 
'•'worth}- and beloved friend"), Selden (in a Latin 
ode), Edmund WaUer. and Herrick, the parson fi'om 
Devonshhe, whose name still hves as that of a master 
of quaint, strong, and also sweet and tender verse, 
we are all most familiar with Beaumont's letter, 
'•' written before he and Master Fletcher came to 
London T\ith two of the precedent comedies, then 
not finished, which deferred their merr}^ meetings 
at the Mermaid." It is a poetical epistle, and is so 
seldom quoted at length, that readers are not much 
acquainted with any but the lines usually reterred 
tx) in relation to the Mermaid — 



260 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIII. 

" Methinks the little wit I had is lost 
Since I saw you ; for wit is like a rest 
Held up at tennis, which men do the best 
"With the best gamesters. What things have we seen 
Done at the Mermaid ! Heard words that have been 
So nimble and so full of subtle flame, 
As if that very one from whence they came 
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest. 
And had resolved to live a fool the rest 
Of his dull life. Then where there hath been thrown 
Wit able enough to justify the town 
For three days past — wit that might warrant be 
For the whole City to talk foolishly 
Till that were cancelled ; and when that was gone 
We left an air behind us which alone 
Was able to make the two next companies 
night witty, though but downright fools, mere * wise, 

Fate once again 

Bring me to thee, who canst make smooth and plain 

The way of knowledge for me, and then I, 

Who have no good but in thy company, 

Protest it will my greatest comfort be 

To acknowledge all I have to flow from thee." 

One can understand the affectionate nature of 
Jonson from four lines of his reply to Beaumont — 

" How I do love thee, Beaumont, and thy muse, 
That unto me dost such religion use ! 
How I do f eare my self e, that am not worth 
The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth." 

The meetings at the taverns about Fleet Street 
were continued long after the Mermaid assemblies ; 
and when Robert Herrick came to London from his 
vicarage at Dean Prior, where he lived in bachelor seclu- 
sion in plainest fashion, and wrote some dehghtful 

* Here again " mere " is used in the sense of " completely " or 
" only " — " nothing else than wise." 



XIII.] HEBBIGK 261 

verse, including the well-known ''■ Cherry Ripe," he 
was one of the older poet's companions. 

Herrick was a Londoner, born in 1591, and son 
of a silversmith, in Cheapside. His portrait looks 
like that of a Roman Emperor, with its great promi- 
nent nose and powerful chin; but he had a tender 
soul, for all his rugged appearance, and, amidst much 
in some of his verses that reflects the coarseness, but 
also the strength, of the age, there is a great deal 
which is dehghtful, as it were with the freshness of 
the bramble flower and the purple bloom that grows 
upon the rugged wall of a country garden. 

What a robust burst of passionate praise is that in 
his " Hesperides " — 

" After the rare arch-poet, Jonson, died, 
The sock grew loathsome, and the buskin's pride, 
Together with the stage's glory, stood 
Each like a poor and pitied widowhood. 
The cirque prophaned was ; and all postures rackt : 
For men did strut and stride, and stare — not act. 
Then, temper flew from words, and men did squeak, 
Look red, and blow, and bluster, but not speak ; 
No holy rage or frantic fires did stir. 
Or flash about the spacious theatre. 
No clap of hands or shout, or praise's proof 
Did crack the playhouse sides or cleave her roof ; 

and that monstrous sin 

Of deep and arrogant ignorance came in ; 
Such ignorance as theirs was who once hist 
At thy unequalled play The Alchemist ; 
Ah ! fie upon 'em ! Lastly, too, all wit 
In utter darkness did and will still sit; 
Sleeping the luckless age out, till that she 
Her resurrection has again with thee." 

There was something almost prophetic in this. 



262 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIII. 

The declension in the taste of the frivolous audiences 
who visited the theatres in the reign of Charles, and 
who could not appreciate the strength and poignancy 
of writers like Jonson, went still lower. Jonson had 
struggled against poverty and failing health, and had 
produced two or three plays, but they were not to 
the fashionable taste. 

Inigo Jones, the famous architect, who was em- 
ployed to build a classic portico to St. Paul's, had 
been associated with him in producing the mechanical 
portions of the masques, but a quarrel between them 
left Jonson deprived, not only of the favour of the 
Court, but of that of the City. The architect, who 
was soon engaged in restoring and rebuilding, was 
attaining the height of fame while Jonson was de- 
clining ; but it is well to know that at the end of 
his life the latter somewhat regained his position, 
and that Charles I. granted him a pension of £100 
and a tierce of canary. It had been intended by 
James I. that he should be Poet Laureate, and he 
had been called by that title, but apparently without 
any regular annual emolument. 

" ! rare Ben Jonson ! " the words carved on the 
slab that marks his tomb in AYestminster Abbey, have 
sometimes been called vulgar and inexpressive. " Jack 
Young," who it is said gave a mason eighteenpence to 
carve it on the stone, is remembered only by this one 
act of what may be called kindly and appreciative 
remembrance ; nor does it seem to be an inappro- 
priate memorial. It is the ejaculation of a sincere 
mourner, who probably could not have composed 



XTIL] ''DICK'S'' AND "THE DEVIL." 263 

even a couplet or verse whicli would have been a 
worthy elegy on the great poet. 

" ! rare Ben Jonson ! " There was no revival 
of the drama till after the playhouses had been closed 
by the Puritans during the serious national troubles ; 
and on the Restoration, amidst the reappearance of 
much that was vile and demoralising on the stage, 
there was a reaction, in which the plays of Shake- 
speare and Jonson held a prominent part, though 
gossiping, matter-of-fact Pepys recorded that the Mid- 
suiinineT NigMs Dremn was the " most insipid, ridicu- 
lous play" that ever he saw in his life. Yet Pepys 
was pretty well acquainted with Shakespeare, and read 
Ben Jonson's dramas, besides witnessing them with 
pleasure, though he failed, after repeated trials, to see 
any humour or much meaning in Butler's " Hudibras," 
when all the rest of the world v^as laughing at it. 

The tavern with the sign of " The Devil and Saint 
Dunstan," and the representation of the saint clutch- 
ing the fiend by the nose with his blacksmith's tongs, 
stood nearly opposite St. Dunstan's Church, and be- 
tween Middle Temple Gate and Temple Bar. It was 
usually called "The Devil," and later, "The Old 
Devil " tavern, to distinguish it from the " Little 
Devil " tavern, next door to Dick's, Dick's, or as 
it was at first called, Richard's, Coffee House, had its 
name from Richard Turner, who was the tenant in 
1680, and the name lasted, at all events, till as late 
as 169B, but it afterwards was knovm as Dick's, and 
is so called in the " Tatler," 

The " Devil " Tavern has been historical ever since 



264 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIII. 

Ben Jonson instituted his famous club in its large 
room, kno^m as the Apollo room, and the club itselt 
became one of the gi'eat landmarks in the history 
of English literature, as it was for more than a 




THE EOTAL SOCIETY'S HOUSE IN CEANE COUET (yy. 270). 

century and a halt a representative resort in the 
Highway of Letters in London. 

AVe read of a good deal of drinking in the 
references to these symposia, where Jonson presided, 
and, as Marmion, one of his contemporaries in Fleet 
Street, says — 



XIII.] THE APOLLO. 265 

'* The born Delphic god 
Drinks sack, and keeps his Bacchanalia, 
And has his incense and his altars smoking. 
And speaks in sparkling prophecies." 

But this, like Jonson's own lines, and even the 
verses which he placed over the door of the Apollo 
room, are to be interpreted by other lines, like those 
of his invitation of a friend to supper — 

" But that which most doth take my muse and me 
Is a pure cup of rich canary wine, 
Which is the Mermaid's now, but shall be mine. 
Of this we will sup free, but moderately ; 
Nor shall our cups make any guilty men : 
But at our parting we will be as when 
We innocently met. No single word, 
That shall be utter'd at our mirthful board, 
Shall make us sad next morning, or affright 
The libert}^ that we'll enjoy to-night." 

This would be an excellent motto verse for an}^ 
club held to-day, except one consisting of total ab- 
stainers, and even they might profitably attend to the 
later lines of it. 

The Apollo verses over the door of the room in 
the " Devil " Tavern were — 

" Welcome all who lead or follow 
To the oracle of Apollo : 
Here he speaks out of his pottle. 
Or the tripos his Tower bottle ; 
All his answers are divine — 
Truth itself doth flow in wine. 
Hang up all the poor hop-drinkers, 
Cries old Sim, the King of Skinkers ; 
He the half of life abuses 
That sits watering with the Muses. 
Those dull girls no good can mean us 
Wine — it is the milk of Venus 



266 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIIT. 

And tlie poet's horse accounted ; 

Ply it, and you all are mounted. 

'Tis the true Phcehian liquor, 

Cheers the brains, makes \dt the quicker, 

Pays all debts, cures all diseases, 

And at once three senses pleases, 

AVelcome all who lead or follow 

To the oracle of Apollo ! " 



The Leges Conviviales — the Club rules — Avere over 
the mantel-piece with the bust of Apollo, and were 
written with all Jonson's grace of Latinity, deprecating 
excess, and forbiddino- amono^ other thing's, the recital 
of insipid poetry. 

The " Old Sim " mentioned in the Apollo verse 
was Simon Wadloe, the landlord of the Tavern — a 
famous man and a t3'pical host, celebrated in a song 
entitled " Old Simon the Kinsf," which lono- remained 
a favourite, especially with country gentlemen who 
had visited London. It seems to have been his son, 
who succeeded him and afterwards became the land- 
lord of the Sun, in Threadneedle Street, to whom 
Pepys refers when, in April, 1661, recording the 
journey of Charles 11. from the Tower to Whitehall, 
at the Restoration, he says, " My lord Monk rode bare 
after the King, and led in his hand a spare horse, as 
being* Master of the Horse. The King, in a most rich 
embroidered suit and cloak, looked most noble. 
Wadlow, the vintner at the Devil, in Fleet Street, 
did lead a fine company of soldiers, all young, comely 
men, in white doublets." 

Shadwell, a later and far inferior dramatist to 
Jonson, frequented the '• Devil," and in one of his plays 



XIII.] COLLEY CIBBEB. 2'37 

— Bury Fair — makes one of the cliaracters (Olcbvit) 
say — '■ I myself, simple as I stand here, was a wit in 
the last age. I was created Ben Jonson's son in the 
Apollo." 

Dryden, too,, in his '•' Defence of the Epilogue," 
speaks of '' grave buttermen " whose memor}' is their 
only plea for being wits. They can t^ll a story of Ben 
Jonson, and perhaps have had fancy enough to give a 
supper in Apollo, that they might be called his sons." 
Dryden, in fact, satirised Shadwell and the members 
of a club held in the tavern m his da}-. 

Later still Prior and Montagu spoke of the 
associations of the Apollo ; and Pope brings it into the 
" Dunciad " in his satire on CoUey Cibber ; for Cibber 
was Poet Laureate, and the Odes of the Laureates 
were read in the Apollo Room — 

" Back to the Devil the last echoes roll, 
And ' CoU ! ' each butcher roars at Hockley Hole." 

Hockley-in-the-Hole, Clerkenwell, was the famous 
locality for bear-baitmo- doo'-fiahtino- and other 
sports in which butchers were supposed to de- 
light. 

Down to the days of the " Spectator," and later still, 
the " Devil " was frequented by successive representa- 
tives of the Highway of Letters. Dr. Garth mvited 
Addison and Swift to dinner there on the 12th of 
October, 1710, and one of the last records of the 
famous old resort is that of Sir John Hawkins, who 
tells us of the visit there of the gi-eat namesake of the 
great poet and dramatist who had made it famous 



268 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIII. 

nearly two centuries before. Though there was no 
Apollo club there m which Dr. Samuel Johnson 
might have succeeded the inimitable Ben, the ancient 
house (it was taken down in 1788, and " Child's 
Place/' an extension of the banking-house, erected 
on the site) was the scene of one of Samuel's 
pleasantest vagaries. This was the celebration of 
the first pubhcation of a book by Mrs. Lennox, the 
author of " The Female Quixote " and " Shakespeare 
Illustrated." Johnson took much friendly interest 
in this lady's work, and on the appearance of her 
first volume invited her and her husband, a lady of 
her acquaintance, and several other friends, including 
members of the club, to supper and to make a 
night of it. The refreshments included a great hot 
apple-pie stuck with bay-leaves, the amusements 
some fanciful invocation of the muses and cere- 
monies of J ohnson's own invention, with a good deal 
of talking, fun, and laughter ; the beverages were 
chiefly tea, coffee, and lemonade, and the festivities 
lasted till eight o'clock next morning. This must 
have been nearly the last symposium in the old 
tavern where Ben Jonson and "his sons" had held 
their revels. 

But there were other taverns where famous men 
did congreo-ate, and Herrick, in an Ode to Jonson, 
says : — 

"Ah Ben! 
Say how, or when 
Shall we thy guests 
Meet at those lyric feasts 
Made at the Sun, 
The Dog, the Triple Tun ? 



XIII.] LILLY THE ASTROLOGER. 269 

Where we such clusters had 

As made us nobly wild, not mad ; 

And yet each verse of thine 

Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine." 



These are not among resorts in the Highway of 
Letters, but were probably either in Holborn or 
towards Chepe ; but in Fleet Street there was the Old 
Bolt-in-Tiin, originally dating from 1443, when it was 
granted to the White Friars as " Hospitium vocatum," 
and the title survives, not as a tavern or as an inn 
and Goach office, but as a booking office and carriers' 
yard on the south side of the Street. The Mitre also 
was there — not the same house which now stands in 
Mitre Court, and bears the original name. The 
present Mitre is not even the actual Mitre immor- 
talised by Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith, Reynolds, and 
the dinners, port wine, and conversation so minutely 
recorded by Bos well. The older Mitre was a tavern 
mentioned by Barry in a comedy called Ram Alley 
(1611), and by Lilly the astrologer, who, in 1640, went 
to the Mitre with his old friend Dr. Percivall Wil- 
loughby, of Derby, and sent for Old Will Poole, the 
astrologer, who lived in Ram Alley, which was on the 
site of the later Hare Court, and formed part of the 
unsavoury district of Whitefriars. 

Lilly, who had been a menial to one Gilbert 
Wright, living near Strand Bridge, married his master's 
widow, and came into possession of the house. He 
had learnt astrology from Evans, a Welshman in 
Holy Orders, and a Master of Arts of Oxford, who 
lived in Gunpowder Alley, Shoe Lane. It is recorded 



270 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIII. 

by Lilly that he and another accompanied Evans to 
Westminster Abbey, where they were to search for a 
cofifer of hidden treasure, the existence of which had 
been revealed to Evans, who had the art of invoking 
spirits "by the circular method." The visit was 
made at night, and in the darkness a violent storm 
of wind came on (caused, it is inferred, by the super- 
natural agencies invoked) at the time that the 
search was about to be completed. Only a light 
coffin was discovered, too light to be the probable 
receptacle of treasure, and the party of investigators 
fled, in fear of the tempest and what it might portend. 

Lilly was a notorious bamboozler, and at one 
time had rather low companions, but became respect- 
able and a freeman of the Salters' Company. He 
was present at the "trial" of Charles I. in West- 
minster Hall, and characteristically saw the silver 
top fall from the King's walking staff. 

In the Mitre the members of the Royal Society 
Club held their dinners during the time that the head- 
quarters of the Society were in Crane Court (then 
a very pleasant place on the north side of Fleet 
Street), from 1710 to 1782. In the latter year they 
had apartments assigned to them at Somerset House. 
During that period, therefore, the scientists and 
philosophers were conspicuous in Fleet Street ; but 
the Society had been incorporated by Charles II., 
after having been an association as early as 1645. 
It met at various places, chiefly at Gresham College, 
before being settled, Urst at Crane Court and then at 
Somerset House. 



XIII.l THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 271 

Charles II. was so fond of dabbling in cliemistry 
that he had a laboratory at Whitehall, and nearly 
succeeded in blowing himself up, along with some 
of the ladies whom he had invited to Avitness his 
unsuccessful scientific experiments. The Duke of 
York was a member also, and some of the early dis- 
cussions of the society were amusing enough, as may 
be imagiaed. But the names of Sir Isaac Newton, 
Wren, Halley, Herschel, Davy, Watt, and many 
more men of great attainments, at once occur to us 
in connection with the institution ; and the house in 
Crane Court represented the latest science of the 
days when Johnson wrote, and Garrick acted, and 
Hogarth, Gainsborough, and Reynolds painted. 

Art and manufactures were also represented in 
Crane Court from 1754 to 1774, for there the Society 
of Arts — "for the encouragement of Arts, Manufac- 
tures and Commerce in Great Britain" — held its 
meetings over a circulating library. As the first 
circulating library had been estabhshed by Bathoe, a 
bookseller in the Strand, in 1740, this establishment 
in Crane Court was doubtless a very welcome, as it 
was certainly an appropriate, institution in the High- 
way of Letters : for though authors and lovers of 
learnmg still met to read and talk at the publishers' 
or booksellers' shops, the advantage of being able to 
obtain books from a regular lending library nuist 
have been obvious to the general reader, who took 
intellectual or imaginative refreshment deliberately, 
and needed time to digest it. 

Barry, the famous painter, Avho was introduced to 



272 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIIT. 

Keynolds by Edmund Burke, and was for a time 
professor and lecturer at tlie Eoyal Academy, exe- 
cuted the pictures which now adorn the council- 
room of the Society in the Adelphi. 

Kichard Cosway, who afterwards became so suc- 
cessful as a miniature painter that he realised an 
immense income and lived in great splendour, was 
the first boy who took a prize of £15 under the 
Society's arrangement for granting premiums as 
rewards to a certain number of boys or girls, under 
the age of sixteen, who should produce the best pieces 
of drawing, and show themselves most capable in an 
examination. 

The first meeting of the Society of Antiquaries 
was held in December, 1707, at the Bear Tavern, in 
the Strand, the formation of the society having been 
proposed by Humphrey Wanley, librarian to the Earl 
of Oxford, founder of the Harleian library, Mr. Bay- 
ford, and Mr. Tulman. They agreed that the business 
of the society should be limited to the object of 
antiquities, and more particularly to such things as 
illustrated, or related to, the history of Great Britain 
prior to the reign of James I. In the following- 
year — or, allowing for the old style, in January, 
1807-8 — they moved to the Young (or Little) Devil 
Tavern in Fleet Street, already mentioned, where 
Peter Le Neve and others were elected members. 
This now important institution began modestly 
enough — the three original members agreeing to 
meet every Friday evening at six " upon pain of 
forfeiture of sixpence " for non-attendance. 



XIII."_ IMFEOVEMEXTS IX THE TIME OF .TABLES E 273 

In 1739 rliev met. probably to dine, at the Mitre, 
and by the rules then ado23ted the number of mem- 
bers was hmited to one hundi'ed,. the entrance fee 
being a guinea, and the subscription twelve shillings a 
year. In 1751 George II. si-anted them a charter, 




on) ST. Dr>-STAX 5 CHUECH. 



and in 1777 George III. gave them rooms in Somerset 
House. 

The reference to the later period to which this 
society proposed to extend its researches reminds us 
that we have jQt to note some features of the High- 
way of Letters before its aspect was changed by the 
Great Fu*e, which destroyed most of its ancient land- 
marks, though others were erected bearing the same 
names and occup;sdng nearly the same sites. 

Many considerable public improvements had been 



274 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIII. 

effected in tlie time of James tlie First, and some of 
them by the direct interposition of the King himself, 
who Avas not deficient in that practical shrewdness 
which enabled him to detect and remedy abuses 
when their perpetration was not pecuniarily profit- 
able to his own exchequer, or connected with his 
claims to undisputed authority. 

His efforts to prevent the extension of building 
in the City, and to preserve the open spaces from 
encroachments, were but a continuance of the en- 
deavours made by Elizabeth, but he went further, as we 
have said, in enacting that fines should be imposed on 
county gentlemen who brought their families to London 
and prolonged their visit beyond a reasonable time. 
The number of persons coming from the provinces 
and crowding the metropolis caused serious in- 
convenience, and, as the people of London were 
several times afflicted by the ravages of the plague, 
which was raging at the time of the King's corona- 
tion, there was considerable danger in the multiplica- 
tion of narrow streets and the accumulation of close 
and ill-ventilated tenements. 

James commanded that at least the fronts of 
houses should be of brick or stone. While in many 
parts of the country the style of architecture still 
known as "Jacobean" Avas remarkably quaint and 
picturesque, though somewhat heavy in decoration, 
m Fleet Street the improvements were chiefly in the 
plaster and carved-wood decorations of the exterior, 
but the overhanging upper storeys remained, nor 
were there any considerable additions to the already 



XIII.] MYDDELTON ANI) THE NEW BJVEB. 275 

existing buildings, or improvements in tlie narrow 
and ill-kept lanes and by-streets. There was no 
paved footway, the path was only divided from the 
road by a few posts at uncertain distances, and there 
was no drainage worthy of the name. 

The great sanitary event of those days was the 
scheme of Sir Hugh Myddelton for the formation of 
an artificial stream (afterwards called the New 
River) from the springs and wells near Ware, in 
Hertfordshire, to Islington and the northern part of 
London. 

In this enterprise James took considerable interest, 
and advanced some portion of the money necessary 
to initiate it, but on the condition that he should 
participate largely in the future profits of the under- 
taking. This arrangement explains the reservation 
of a number of King's shares, which at a more recent 
date became an excellent investment and yielded 
enormous interest. The scheme was laid before the 
Common Council of the City in 1608-9 ; the company 
was incorporated in 1619, six years before James's 
death. Though the business of the tankard men in 
conveying water from the conduits for the supply of 
the houses continued, and part of the duty of City 
apprentices was that of carrying water for daily con- 
sumption, many houses were supplied by leaden pipes, 
and the completion of the New River, in 1620, on 
which occasion the King conferred on Hugh Myddel- 
ton the honour of knighthood, was a considerable 
improvement. 

The water was carried through the northern part 
s 2 



276 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIII. 

of London, and as far as beyond Fleet Street, or as a 
prologue of a later date says — 

"While thirsty Islington laments in vain, 
Half the New River roU'd to Drury Lane." 

Myddelton himself was nearly ruined by his enter- 
prise, so that he sold his interest to the company, with 
the poor proviso that he and his heirs should receive 
for ever £100 a year, an annuity the claim for which 
ceased in 1715, so that the projector of the scheme, 
who was a Welshman and member of the Goldsmiths' 
Company, had little reward, or, as Howell, in one of 
his interesting letters, said, " Witness that cold re- 
ward, or rather those cold drops of water which 
were cast upon my countryman, Sir Hugh Myddelton, 
for bringing Ware river through her streets, the most 
serviceable and wholesome benefit that ever she 
received." 

It may have been from a philosophical view of his 
experience as an inmate of the Fleet that Howell, in 
his letter of August 2, 1643, said, "Let the English 
people flatter themselves as long as they will that 
they are free, yet they are, in effect, but prisoners, as 
all other islanders are." 

Both Howell and Myddelton were to be seen in 
the Highway of Letters. In fact, James Howell, whose 
letters are still largely quoted in reference to his 
times, wrote several of his amusing, undated epistles 
while he was a prisoner in the Fleet, though they 
were apparently addressed from several different 
places, and to various persons of distinction. Another 



XIII] 



ABRAHAM COWLEY. 



277 



eminent representative of the famous street was 
Michael Drayton, the poet, Tvho, it is recorded, 
hved at ''the baje windowe house" next the east 
end of St. Dunstan's Church. His monument, with 
the Une epitaph written by Ben Jonson, is in West- 
minster Abbey. There, also, we see the monument 




THE SAYOY rN" 1650. 



to another of the famous inhabitants and representa- 
tives of the Highway of Letters — the gentle, loyal, 
and accomplished Abraham Cowley, who was born 
in Fleet Street, where his father was in business, 
Aubrey says as a grocer; but as Aubrey was often 
inaccurate, and other records make the elder Cowley 
a stationer, this is uncertain. At any rate, Abraham 
Cowley is one of the poets an acquaintance mth 
whose poetical works is supposed to be necessary 
for a claimant of a knowledge of English literature, 
though he is not often read for recreation. Dr. Johnson 



278 TME HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIlI. 

placed him among the chief "metaphysical poets," 
and appreciated his learning — for he took a doctor's 
degree, studied science, and especially botany, as a 
suitable accompaniment to poetry, and at an early 
age wrote some plays, one of which. The Guardian, 
was, later, converted into a comedy called Cutter of 
Coleman Street. He was treated with the gross 
ingratitude usually shown by " the Merry Monarch " 
to people who had done signal service to the cause 
of the Stuarts. Cowley had been distinguished for 
loyalty, which, in the time of the Commonwealth, 
had exposed him to difficulties, if not to serious in- 
jury. Before the death of Oliver Cromwell he had 
removed to a small farm at Chertsey, of which he 
had been permitted to become the purchaser. He 
Hved till 1667 without the reward for his services 
which he had reason to expect, but he had made 
a great and deserved reputation by the ability and 
variety of his published works. Even the mastership 
of the Savoy, for which he had made application, was 
refused him. 




FROM A FOLIO OF BEN JONSON'S WOEKS (1641). 




RICHAHr/SOX EEADINa FBOM THE MS. OF " SIB CHAELES GEANDISON," 

{From a Sketch made at the time by one of the Farty.) 



CHAPTER XIA^ 

BEFORE AND AFTER THE FIRE. 

Increased Number of Coaches— Taylor, the Water Poet— Tobacco— 
The "Counterblast "—Shoe Lane — Bangor House — Izaak Walton 
— General Monk in Fleet Street — John Florio — Decreetz — Love- 
lace—His Grave in St. Bride's— Pepys at the Cockpit— Hogarth 
in Harp Lane — Oldbourne Hall — Bishop Dolben— St. Andrew's 
Workhouse— Chatterton — An Obliterated Graveyard — St. Bride's 
Church— Eichardson— Stationers' Hall — Portraits— Steele— The 
Company's Plate— The School— Milton in Fleet Street— Lil- 
• burne—Prynne— Andrew Ma well— Oliver Cromwell — Fetter 
Lane. 

One of tlie principal changes in tlie aspect of the 
Highway of Letters in the time of James I. was 
caused by the rapid increase in the number of 
coaches, starting from the " Belle Sauvage," the " Black 
Lion," and other famous inn-yards in the vicinity. 
In vain did Taylor, "the water poet," deplore the 
injury done to the numerous pliers ot the oar 



280 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



[XIY. 



upon the Thames ; and though James ordered 
the revival of the Lord Mayor's shows, which had, 
for some years previously, been discontinued, they 




OUTER COUET OF LA BELLE SAUVAGE, 1828. 



were not made occasions for river pageants, but 
were processions from Guildhall to Westminster, 
through Chepe, Fleet Street, and the Strand. 

In 1608, so great was the influx of native and 
foreign visitors, that storehouses were erected at 
Bridewell, in expectation of a dearth of provisions. 

Perhaps the dread of the plague may account for 



XIY.] IZAAK WALTON. 281 

the enormous number of tobacco-shops, of which it 
was said there were seven thousand in 1614-15, in 
spite of the King's " Counterblast " ! 

In Fleet Street and some of its tributaries there 
were still many dwellings of importance, and some 
of them were regarded as desirable, and even fashion- 




THE "black LIOX," WHITEFEIAES. 



able, residences at a much later date — among them 
Bangor House, in Shoe Lane, named after the house 
of the Bishops of Bangor, the last of the episcopal 
residents being Bishop Dolben, who had been Rector 
of Haclaiey, and died in 1633. Many of the houses 
had gardens, and were pleasant places enough, when 
■ there was no plague in the vicinity. There was very 
good fishing in the Thames, too, as Izaak Walton well 
knew, and afterwards recorded, when, in the intervals of 
his country excursions, he went angling from a wherry 



282 TME HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIV. 

between London Bridge and the Temple. Izaak, as 
we have had occasion to mention, hved at the second 
house on the west side of Chancery Lane, next door 
to that once famous Fleet Street inn, the " Harrow." 
Here he carried on the business of a linen-draper, 
in 1624, occupying half the shop, the other half 
being that of a hosier, named John Mason. He 
afterwards removed to the seventh house on the 
same side, where he changed his business to that 
of a "sempster," or milliner. 

Walton's "Compleat Angler" is still a standard 
book, because of its fresh and delightful style — the 
style that indicates a healthy and simple man. His 
biographies of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Hubert, and 
Sandison are also known, and though he left Fleet 
Street for Winchester — where he died in 1683 — he 
had long been associated with it, for he lived to be 
ninety years old — a result, perhaps, of those pleasant 
excursions and temperate habits, the descriptions of 
which are still such agreeable reading. The author 
of the " Gentle Art " went to Harp Alley, in Shoe Lane, 
to buy his fish-hooks from Mr. Kerbye, "the most 
excellent hook-maker that the nation affords." 

Shoe Lane was a thoroughfare of considerable 
importance, for it extended from Fleet Street to 
Holborn, by St. Andrew's Church, the whole length 
of the present lane, and of what is now St. Andrew's 
Street. The great conduit which stood at the Fleet 
Street end has already been referred to. It was near 
this conduit that General Monk lived, and to his 
lodging there he returned when he had marched 



XIV.] SHAKE SVE ABE' 8 COPY OF MONTAIGNE. 283 

his troops into the City for the purpose of restoring 
the Stuarts, by bringing Prince Charles into England 
after the collapse of Eichard Cromwell, Oliver Crom- 
well's son and successor. We can almost imagine the 
solid-faced, reticent, heavy-looking, determined man, 
standing there in his great boots, looking towards 
St. Paul's, and speculating what next move would 
be for his own best advantage, or what kind of advice 
he would have from his wife, the blacksmith Clarges' 
daughter, and once a milliner, who had been his 
mistress, but was shortly to be raised, with him, 
to the peerage, and to become Duchess of Albe- 
marle. 

One of the best-known dwellers in Shoe Lane was 
John Florio, the once famous author of an Italian and 
English dictionary, and of a good many other books 
with fanciful titles, now little remembered. He was 
descended from an Italian family of Waldensian 
refugees, settled in London ; had taught French and 
Italian at Magdalen College, Oxford, and had been 
tutor, not only to Prince Henry, eldest son of James I., 
but to the Queen Anne of Denmark, to whom he 
dedicated his dictionary, under the title of "Queen 
Anne's New World of Words." He translated " Mon- 
taigne," of which there is a copy in the library of the 
British Museum, bearing the autograph of William 
Shakespeare. This is said to be the only known 
book with the signature of the great dramatist, who 
is supposed to have made considerable use of it in 
writing some parts of " The Tempest." 

John Decree tz, serjeant painter to James I. and 



284 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIV 

Charles I., was another inhabitant of Shoe Lane ; and 
in what was one of the mean off-shoots of the 
thoroughfare, Gunpowder Alley, died the elegant and 
accomplished Kichard Lovelace, handsomest and most 




IZAAK WALTON'S HOUSE AT THE COENER OF CHANCEEY LANE A^^) 
FLEET STREET. 



distinguished among those young cavaHers who were 
ruined in health and fortune by their loyalty to the 
first Charles Stuart. Lovelace was famous in his own 
time for his personal charm and personal beauty. His 
fame has survived as a poet, who, if he had written 



XIY.] PEPY8 IN SHOE LANE. 285 

nothing more than the exquisite verses "To Althea from 
Prison," containing the lines — 

" stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage," 

would still deserve to be remembered. 

At the death of the King he was released from 
gaol, to which he had been committed by the Parlia- 
ment, but he had consumed all his estate, he grew 
melancholy, and suffered from sickness, which ended 
in consumption. He was buried at the west end of 
St. Bride's Church. In his last days he was chiefly 
supported by the contributions of friends. Aubrey 
says that for some months George Petty, a haber- 
dasher of Fleet Street, carried twenty shillings to 
him every Monday morning from Manny and Charles 
Cotton. 

Leigh Hunt supposed that Richardson — familiar 
with the locality because of his house and printing 
ofiice being in Salisbury Square, opposite — and know- 
ing the story of Lovelace, borrowed his name for the 
hero of " Clarissa." 

To Cockpit Alley, Shoe Lane, Pepys went on the 
21st December, 1663, " to see a cock fighting at a new 
pit there, a spot I was never at in my life ; but Lord ! 
to see the strange variety of people, from Wildes, that 
was Deputy Governor of the Tower, when Robinson 
was Lord Mayor, to the poorest 'prentices, bakers, 
brewers, butchers, draymen, and what not, and all 
these fellows, one with another, cursing and betting. 
I soon had enough of it." It was in Harp Lane, 



286 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIY 

leading from Shoe Lane, that Hogarth and a com- 
panion painter opened an exhibition of sign-boards — a 
collection of grotesque paintings, intended to ridicule 
some of the pictures of the da}^ The real joke seems 
to have been that they Y\^ere taken seriously, as sign- 
boards actually exhibited for sale ; and as about that 
time it was being proposed, as a measure of public 
safety, that projecting signs should be abolished, and 
no sign-boards permitted, except such as were placed 
flat against the walls, there may have seemed to be 
some grounds for regarding the exhibition as a 
genuine trade enterprise. 

Two most important buildings in Shoe Lane were 
the ancient " Oldbourne Hall," mentioned by Stow as 
being let out m tenements, even in his time, and the 
house or mansion of Bangor Place, the town residence 
of the Bishops of Bangor till the time of Charles L, 
when it was purchased by Sir John Barkstead for the 
purpose of erecting other tenements. As we have 
seen, the last Bishop of Bangor who lived there was 
Dolben, who died in 1633 ; but the old place was 
not utterly destroyed, for early in the last century 
the building, or what was left of it, was included 
in a workhouse, or poorhouse, of the parish of St. 
Andrew, and was known as Shoe Lane AVorkhouse, 
a queer, ramshackle old place, which, with the 
adjoining property, was in the trust of the Thavie 
estate, along with Thavie's Inn. The locality has 
undergone successive changes, which have left few 
landmarks by which to associate it with its earlier 
history. One of its chief features was the burial 



XIY.] THOMAS CHATTERTOX. 287 

ground given by the Earl of Dorset to the parish of 
St. Bride, m 1610, on condition that there should be 
no more interments on the south of St. Bride's 
Church, where Dorset House then stood. This burial 
ground remained in 1737, after Fleet Ditch had been 
arched over, and Fleet Market had been formed in the 
centre of the thoroughfare on the west side of Fleet 
Prison, to supersede Stock's Market, which had been 
taken for the site of the Mansion House. 

Both Dorset House and St. Bride's Church were 
consumed in the Fh*e of London, and the restrictions 
on burials on the south of St. Bride's Church were 
relinquished. The burial-ground by Fleet Market, 
having been duly consecrated, was held by the parish 
at a quit rent, and the adjoining burial-ground of 
St. Andrew's j)arish, and of the parish workhouse in 
Shoe Lane, had also been estabhshed by the exertions 
of the Rev. AV. Hacker, the rector of St. Andrew's. 
The pauper burial-ground, so far as can be made out, 
occupied the place where the rectory house now 
stands. 

This is about the nearest guess that can be made, 
in endeavouring to unagine where the bod}^ was 
laid of that boy of remarkable genius who was 
found dead in his attic-lodging in Brooke Street, 
Holbom, with some grains of the arsenic with which 
he had poisoned himself still between his teeth. 
There is scarcely a more painful and pathetic story in 
literary history than that of this proud, sullen, sensi- 
tive, passionate youth, Thomas Chatterton, whose 
extraordinary ability was so allied to a peculiar moral 



288 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIY. 

perversion that we forget we are condemning a child — 
or, at all events, a mere boy of wayward and irregulated 
mind — when we blame him for " forgeries " which 
were but simulations of ancient documents, the in- 
vention to produce which, would, if he had lived to- 
day, have brought him such fame that magazines 
would have been competing for his services as one of 
the most distinguished of rising fictionists. 

It is a harrowing picture, that of the famishing 
youth refusing the offer of his poor landlady, the 
"sack maker" of Brooke Street, to return him six- 
pence from the amount of his week's rent, or to 
provide him with a homely meal, while he was barely 
keeping body and soul together by eating a daily 
portion of a stale twopenny loaf. He had not money 
to pay the baker's wife for the few loaves on which he 
had subsisted for some weeks, and his friend Mr. 
Cross, a chemist in the same street, was afraid of 
arousing his indignation by inviting him to supper. 
Cross either gave or sold him a small quantity of 
arsenic, with which, as he represented, he wished to 
make an experiment. The experiment succeeded. It 
was that of opening the door of death, at which he 
had been lingering in want and madness. 

The end was the parish funeral, the undis- 
tinguished grave, the entry in the register of burials 
of the church of St. Andrew's, Holborn, under the date 
August 28th, 1770 — " WilHam Chatterton, Brooks 
Street." Even his first name was erroneously entered, 
for he was only a pauper whom nobody owned ; but it 
undoubtedly refers to Thomas Chatterton, and to the 



XIY.] 



CHATTEBTON'S BURIAL. 



289 



entry a later hand has added the words, " the poet," 
with the signature "J. Mill," as though the person 
responsible for the explanation was known and his 
authority would be recognised. In one of the bio- 




OLD ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL, 17-50 (p. 296). 



graphies a story is told of Chatterton's body having 
been (surreptitiously?) obtained and removed to 
Bristol, where it was interred in the churchyard of St. 
Mary Redcliffe, but this is not to be regarded as 



290 TBE HIGBlWAY OF LETTERS. [XIV. 

authentic. Tlie imperfect register is tlie sole official 
record. The house, No. 4, Brooke Street, in which the 
boy ched, is no longer to be seen ; grave and graveyard 
have been blotted out beneath the turmoil and traffic 
of street and market, for Fleet Market was removed 
further to the west in 1826, and took the name of 
Farringdon Market. This alteration obliterated a 
large portion of the burial ground, which was ordered 
to be paved before being converted into a market. 
Farringdon Street was formed into one wide thorough- 
fare, which included the market. Then the Fleet 
Prison — rebuilt after the former structure had been 
burnt by the Gordon rioters — was pulled down " for 
good." 

The area of demolition, called ''' the ruins," became 
for years afterwards a desolate and evil-haunted 
locality, whereabout the lingering remains of Fleet 
Ditch — a sluggish stream of filth hiding itself amidst 
the remnants of miserable but inhabited tenements — 
still polluted the air. The ruinous area became the 
resort of betting men, sharpers and ruffians, till pre- 
parations began for clearing it, and in 1866 the works 
for forming the viaduct which spans the Holborn 
Yalley changed the aspect of the locality. The 
burial-grounds were obliterated, the workhouse in 
Shoe Lane had aheady disappeared, under the opera- 
tion of the Poor Law Union, and now the remnant of 
Farringdon Market is being removed. 

In old St. Bride's some distinguished persons were 
buried — Wynkyn de Worde, Sir Richard Baker, author 
of the " Chronicle," who died in the Fleet Prison, and 



XIT.] FATIEXTS IX STATIOXEES' HALL. 291 

Others ; nor has the new church, built after the lire, 
been less remarkable m this respect, tor one of the 
earhest buried there Avas Flatman,. poet and painter, 
whose verse Lord Rochester accused Cowley of imita- 
ting; Francis Sandford, author of the '•'Genealogical 
Historj'," who died m the Fleet Prison in 1693 : the 
widow of Sir William Davenant and her son, Dr. 
Charles Davenant, another avIio died in the Fleet; 
and Robert Lloyd, a fiiend of Charles Churchill — 
1764. Three years before the latter date, a yet 
more famous man had been interred there — Samuel 
Richardson, the novelist and printer, author of 
''Pamela,'"' •'•Clarissa Harlowe," and "Sir Charles 
Grandison,'"' of whom, and of whose visitors at his 
house in Sahsbury Square, there will be need to 
say something presently. 

Richardson's grave, in the centre aisle, is marked 
by a flat stone, and on the opposite wall a memorial 
brass was not loncf ag-o erected bv Mr. Joshua Butter- 
worth, who was at the time Master of the Stationers' 
Company, with which the memory of Richardson is so 
closely associated, as having served the office of Mas- 
ter in 1754. His portrait is in Stationers' Hall ^yit]l 
those of Steele, Prior, Dr. Hoadley, Bishop of Bangor, 
Tincent Wing, the astrologer, first compiler of those 
sheet almanacs of which the Company of late years 
had the monopoly, and others, including Robert Xelson, 
supposed author of the '•' Whole Duty of Man," and 
looking, as Leigh Hunt says, "the prototype of Sir 
Charles Grandison, as regular and passionless in liis 
face as if he had been made only to wear his wig." 



29i 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



[XIY. 



The same is not to be said of the face of Steele, 
with his black eyes, chubby, short face, and jovial 
aspect, and still less of Kichardson, who, instead 
of being the smooth, satisfied -looking personage 

represented in 
some engravings of 
him (Avhich make 
his heartrending 
romances appear 
miaccountable and 
cruel), has a face 
as uneasy as can 
well be conceived 
— flushed and shat- 
tered with emo- 
tion. Stationers' 
Hall used fre- 
Oj^uently to be let 
on hire for dinners, 
meetings, concerts, 
funerals, lotteries, 
and in 1745 was 

VIRTUE AND INNOCENCE AT THE TOMB OF 

" CLAEISSA." {From an edition dated lent tO the Sur- 

geons Company 
"upon conditions that no dissections were made 
therein." Leigh Hunt thought it was here that Steele 
and Bishop Hoadley were present at an anniversary 
dinner, when an inferior ofiicer of the Company, with 
the reputation of a humorist, came in on his knees to 
drink to "the Glorious Memory" (of William III.), 
it was evident that he was drunk — Steele himself very 




XIY.] STEELE AND THE BISHOP. 298 

probably pretty well on — and the bishop was a 
little embarrassed, when Steele whispered to him, " Do 
laugh, my lord ; pray laugh — 'tis humanity to laugh." 
The good-natured prelate complied, and Steele wrote 




INTEEIOE OF (THE PRESENT) STATIONERS' HALL. 

to him next day a penitential letter, in which occurs 
the admirable couplet : — 

" Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits, 
All faults he pardons, though he none commits." 

In 1654 the Stationers' Hall, formerly 'Bergavenny 
House, was so much out of repair that the livery 
dinner had to be held elsewhere, and in the following 
year the " Book of Martyrs " was sold to pay for the 
rebuilding. This book had been frequently reprinted, 
and when, in 1631, it was out of print, some "persons 
of quality," being desirous that it might be reproduced 



294 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XI Y. 

for the general good of the kingdom, threatened to 
print it themselves if the Company did not immedi- 
ately issue a fresh edition. A copy of the " Book of 
Martyrs/' of the best paper, ruled, bound in Turkey 
leather, gilt, with the King's arms stamped on it, was 
presented to Charles II. in 1660, "as a token of the 
Company's duty and submission to his royal person 
and government." 

Six years afterwards the hall, which had been re- 
built, perished in the Great Fire, and all its contents, 
including the seal of the Company, appear to have 
been consumed. Fortunately the registers were 
saved, probably because they were at the clerk's 
house on Clerkenwell Green. In 1674 the building 
of another hall was finished, and the Court agreed 
with Stephen Colledge (the famous Protestant joiner 
who was hanged at Oxford in 1681) to wainscot the 
hall " with well- seasoned and well-matched wainscot " 
for £300. That he did his work well may be 
seen by its present condition. It was once the 
custom to crown the Master and Wardens with 
garlands on their election, as in the Barbers' Coui- 
pany the custom is observed of placing coronets, or 
caps of maintenance, on the heads of those officers. It 
was also customary for each Master of the Stationers 
to present the Company with a piece of plate, weigh- 
ing not less than fourteen ounces, so that we find 
records of " spones of sylver gjdt," " a salte with a 
cover," " a bowle parcell gylte," " a cuppe all gjltQ, 
with a cover, of the gyfte of Master Way, called a 
mawdelen cuppe," and a number of silver-gilt and all- 



XIY.] THE STATIONERS' SCHOOL. 295 

gilt spoons, from well-known printers, like Tottell, 
Jugge, Day, and others. In 1643, however, the Com- 
pany's plate, except a " standing cup," was sold, and 
out of the proceeds £120 lent on the security of the 
plate, and various other sums, amounting to above 
£1,500 (which had been borrowed to meet the 
Company's proportion of the royal loans), were 
repaid. 

The Stationers' Company is comprised of members 
of the trade onl}^, and m this respect is a rare, if not 
the only, survival of what City guilds vfere originally 
intended to be — the list of its Masters and officers 
including some names of printers and publishers 
which may be said to be historical in their association 
with the Highway of Letters. 

The foundation of the well-kno^Mi school main- 
tained by the Company was £1,000, given by Alder- 
man John Morton, Master in 1607, 1611, and 1612. 
The income of the lands bought with this sum was 
originally to be lent to live young men of the Com- 
pany, but the amount was afterwards used for the 
purchase of houses in Wood Street,- the rentals of 
which, together with other bequests to the Company, 
went to the establishment of the Stationers' School, 
which in 1861 was opened as a middle -class day 
school for boys, on the site of the house in Bolt 
Court, the latest residence of Dr. Johnson, and after- 
wards occupied by Mr. Thomas Bensley, a printer. 

A scheme is now being carried out for the 
removal of the school from this crowded localit}^ to 
Hornsey Yale, where about two acres of suitable land 



296 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIY. 

have been purchased, and plans have been prepared by 
the architect. In this transference the school is but 
following the example of the Charterhouse, St. Paul's, 
and other City foundations. St. Paul's, occupying a 
site facing the east-end of the Cathedral, was de- 
molished in 1886, the school being removed to the 
Hammersmith Road. 

The fame of St. Bride's Church before the Fire of 
London, and its association with the Highway of 
Letters, of which it has ever been a landmark, may 
be said to have been chiefly emphasised by Milton 
having had a dwelling in the churchyard, at the house 
of a tailor, named Russell, where he first undertook 
the instruction of his sister's two sons. 

It is easy to understand that Avhen he had left 
this lodging and sought retirement and space for his 
library in the quiet garden house in Aldersgate Street, 
the man who wrote on the liberty of unlicensed prmt- 
ing, and was in the thick of the tempest of pamphlets 
and essays which broke out in Fleet Street during 
the period that ended in the Protectorate, was often 
a foremost figure in that highway. 

The great thoroughfare just before that time had 
been the scene of savage punishments inflicted on 
pamphleteers, who were themselves uncompromising 
and often unscrupulous, and lost their ears or had 
their noses slit, or Avere branded in the face at the end 
of Fetter Lane, or stood in the pillor}' at the Temple, 
as Prynne and John Lilburne did — men who could 
not be silenced, even b}^ gagging, and who gloried in 
what was intended to be their shame, but which, 



XIY.] JOHN MILTON AND ANDREW MAEVELL. 297 

instead of* being a mark of infamy, became a dis- 
tinction, as the scars of wounds received in a conflict 
for freedom. 

One can imagine Milton's beautiful face, at which 
passengers in Fleet Street must so often have turned 




PORTRAIT OF STEELE. {From the Engraving for John NichoWs Editions 
of his Letters, &c.) 



to look, as he passed towards Whitehall or Lincoln's 
Inn — a face, the features of which were so delicate 
and regular, that while he was at college the accom- 
plished youth had been called " the lady of Cam- 
bridge." One can imagine at a later date, when 
those gentle eyes Avere growing dim, and the Latin 
secretary (or foreign secretary) of the Lord Protector 
needed help in his work^ Milton and Andrew Marvell 



298 THI] HIGHWAY OF LETTEB8. [XIY 

passing along Fleet Street towards the lodging of the 
latter, in Maiden Lane, near the Strand. With what 
pleasure must the two poets have talked, as they 
strolled, or sat on a bench, in the Temple Gardens — 
how Marvell must have risen to the height of Milton's 
great imaginmgs — how the author of " L' Allegro " 
must have caught the flavour of Marvell's wit and 
pungent epigTam — how ardently he must have ad- 
mired the incorruptible soul of the man who, when 
he was so poor that he was about to dine off a broiled 
blade-bone of mutton, insisted on returning to his 
friend Danby, who had called on him, an order on 
the Treasury for £1,000, slipped into his hand as a 
present, but intended as a bribe to secure either his 
support or his silence. 

And that other figure from Lincoln's Inn, the 
plain, rather slovenly and ill-groomed 3^oung man 
from the country — he with the rugged face, the 
abrupt manner, the suit made b}^ a country tailor, 
the heavy boots, the set, grim features, the great 
chin, the piercing eye, the wart upon his cheek — 
Oliver Cromwell, the farmer from Cambridgeshire, 
who was a student at . Lincoln's Inn, and whose voice, 
harsh and strident when it was first heard in Parlia- 
ment, afterwards echoed through Europe, when at the 
Courts of France and Spain and at the Vatican, it 
spoke a language Avhich the enemies of England could 
not pretend to disregard or to misunderstand. 

In the tremendous conflict the second episode of 
which terminated with the beheading of Charles the 
First, Fleet Street, by its habitues, by its outpouring 



XIY.] SELDEN AND BABEBONES. 299 

of pamphlets, " libels," and pasquinades, reflected the 
turbulent and changing aspects of the time. The 
political, the doctrinal (not to say the religious), the 
social changes — the alternating declarations and 
assumptions of Cavalier and Roundhead ; of patriots 
like Hampden ; of persecuting prelates like Laud ; 
of thorough rulers by the sword and the assertion of 
Divine right like Strafford ; of calm, dogged, deter- 
mined upholders of civil and religious liberty like 
Pym ; of the hundred differing and strenuous leaders 
of various sections of men of thought and action, or 
of men of selfish impulses — were all represented in 
this Highway of Letters. 

The learned and accomplished Selden still lived 
in the Temple, near to Whitefriars ; and Barebones 
(doubtless a corruption of Barbon or Barbonne, the 
name of a French or Walloon refugee family), the 
leatherseller, after whom a Parliament was nick- 
named, dwelt in Fetter Lane. 



CHAPTER XY. 

WHITE FRIARS AXD THE PLAY-HOUSES. 

Salisbury Court — Dorset Gardens — The Davenants — Betterton — 
Harris — KiUigrew — The King's and the Duke's Theatres — 
Privilege of Sanctuary — "Alsatians" — Templars and 'Prentices 
— Censorship of the Press — Prosecution of Printers — Mutilation 
of Books. 

The fact that each, end of the thoroughfare was a 
place of execution or of punishment made Fetter 
Lane notorious. But it had some famous inhabit- 
ants, notably Hobbes, of Malmesbury, author of the 
"Leviathan," Avho was celebrated before and after 
the Civil War and the Commonwealth. It is stated 
that Dryden for a time lived in this lane, but the date 
is uncertain, and the famous wit, poet, and king of the 
coffee houses is more certainly associated with Gerrard 
Street, Soho, in the later, and with Long Acre in the 
middle, part of his career, for he lived in both places, 
and was in each near to his daily resort, Will's Coffee 
House, in Russell Street, Covent Garden. Pope tells 
us that it was Drj^den who made Will's Coffee House 
the gTeat resort of the wits of his time. " After his 
death Addison transferred it to Button's, who had 
been a servant of his ; they were opposite each other 
in Russell Street, Covent Garden." 

But Dryden's footsteps echoed in Fleet Street 
as a dweller in the Highway of Letters and a rate- 
payer of St. Bride's, for among the eminent inhabitants 
of Salisbury Court (now Salisbury Square), Shadwell, 



XY.] DBYDEN IN SALISBURY COURT. 



301 



who Avrote the play entitled The Squire of Alsatia ; 
Lady Davenant, widow of Sir William, who suc- 
ceeded Jonson as writer of masques and plays, 




HOUSE SAID TO HAVE BEEN OCCUPIED BY DRYDEN IN FETTER LANE. 

and was named Laureate after the Commonwealth; 
Betterton, Cave, Underhill, Sandford, and Harris, 
actors, who lived next the Duke's Theatre, in Dorset 
Gardens, we find the name of John Dryden. Dryden 



302 TEE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XT. 

may be said to have been for many years the acknow- 
ledged magnate of tbe world of letters and clubs, as 
distinctly as Ben Jonson had been before him, and 
even more generally than Samuel Johnson became, in 
the time after l^ope, Swift, Addison, and Steele had 
passed from the world of letters, and the repre- 
sentatives of learning had occasionally resorted to 
Kensington Gardens, and had divided their time 
between Fleet Street and the neighbourhood of Soho 
and Leicester Fields. 

As to the former precinct of the Carmelites, or 
White Friars, the church and buildings of the 
monastery, after the dissolution of the religious 
houses, had given place to "many fair houses, built 
for lodgings for noblemen and others," and had long 
disappeared, except that first, in about 1580, the old 
refectory of the monastery, Avhich stood outside the 
garden wall of Dorset House (the Inn of the Bishops 
of Salisbury), was transformed into a place where 
plays and interludes were acted, and then, in 1580 
a theatre was built on the site of it. The old 
building — though it was said to have been used for 
thirty years for performances given by " the Children 
of her Majesty" (Queen Elizabeth) — seems never to 
have been in vogue for the representation of plays. 
In fact, the same chronicle informs us that it had 
" httle or no furniture for a playhouse, saving an old 
tattered curten, some decayed couches, and a few 
worne out properties and pieces of arras for hangings 
to the stage and tire-house." The rain had made 
its way in, and, says the chronicler, ''if it be not 



XY.] SALISBURY COURT THEATRE. 303 

repaired it raust soone be plucked down, or it will 
fall." 

It was '''plucked down/' but the building which 
took its place, as "the Whitefriars Theatre," seems 
to have had little success, and so little, or so ill, fame, 
that, although the name of the theatre appears on a 
play — Woman is a Weathercock — printed in 1612, 
and performed by the Children of the Revels to 
James's queen (Anne of Denmark), the building was 
also pulled down very shortly after that date. 

The two theatres which afterwards appeared in 
the same locality — the Salisbury Court Theatre, built 
in 1629 by the players, Richard Gunnell and William 
Blagrove, and the Dorset Gardens Theatre, opened in 
1671 under the management of Lady Davenant 
(widow of Sir William Davenant), represented by her 
son Charles, Mr. Betterton, and Mr. Harris — occupied 
difterent sites, the former standing in the ground of 
the old barn, or granary, at the lower end of the old 
court of Salisbury House, the latter on the City side 
of Salisbury Court, where it had not only an open 
space in front for coaches to set dowm and take up 
visitors, but public " stairs " on the river side, for the 
convenience of those who went by the silent highway. 

Salisbury Court Theatre was built in 1629, and 
was then spoken of by Howes as a " new, faire play- 
house, near the White-Fryers," and the seventeenth 
stage, or common playhouse, which had been made 
within the space of three score years in London 
and the suburbs. Its subsequent history was not 
long, for in 1649 it was pulled down by a company 



304 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XY. 

of soldiers, " set on/' as Howes says in his MS. notes, 
quoted by Collier, "by the sectaries of these sad 
times." 

The ground, however, was acquired by Beeston, 
a player, in 1652, and a new theatre built and opened 
in 1660, in which the company, under Davenant, 
afterwards played, while their theatre in Lincoln's 
Inn Fields (transformed to a playhouse from a tennis 
court) was prepared for them. The Salisbury Court 
Theatre was burnt in the fire of London, and 
not rebuilt. When the Dorset Gardens Theatre was 
built, facmg the Thames, in 1671, Davenant's, or, as 
it was called, the Duke's (Duke of York's) company 
abandoned their place m Lincoln's Inn Fields, which 
was opened at the back of what is now the Royal 
College of Surgeons, and took possession of the ncAv 
house in Whitefriars. 

A good deal of confusion seems to have arisen as 
to the identity of these two theatres — the Duke's 
theatres — which can only be solved by a reference to 
the dates at which the name is given to one or the 
other of them (in Pepys' Diary, and elsewhere). 

The confusion is, perhaps, accentuated by the fact 
that, on the death of Tom Killigrew, who had the 
licence, or patent, for the King's (Charles 11.) players 
or company of actors at the theatre in Drury Lane 
(opened in 1663), the Duke's and the King's servants 
became one company, only eleven years after the 
Dorset Gardens, or new Duke's Theatre, had been 
opened. 

The Dorset Gardens Theatre was afterwards 



XY.j 



PRIZE-FIGHTING. 



305 



occasionally used for dramatic performances ; but 
exhibitions of wrestling, fencing, prize-fighting, and 
other amusements were also held there by anyone 




DOESET GARDENS THEATRE. (From Settle's "JEmpress of Jforocco.'") 

who could afford to hire it. It has been mentioned, 
however, that in those days, and even as late as 
George III., ''prize-fighting" did not mean boxing, 
u 



306 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XY. 

but fighting with weapons — mostly broadswords or 
sabres — in which one or other of the combatants, 
perhaps both, were severely wounded, and sometimes 
one was killed. 

This will serve to explain the relations between 
the Duke's or Dorset Gardens, the King's or Drury 
Lane, and the Lincoln's Inn, Theatres, and their ap- 
parently transposable names, as we find mention of 
them in records of the time of Charles II. Dorset 
Gardens Theatre stood till 1720, when it was pulled 
down and the site Avas occupied as a wood or timber 
yard. As it was designed b}^ Wren and adorned (so it 
is said) with sculpture by Gibbons, it seems to have 
been unnecessarily neglected. 

The privilege of "sanctuary," which, before the 
dissolution of the monasteries, made a large portion 
of the precinct of Whitefriars a refuge for offenders 
against the law, was confirmed, and even enlarged, by 
James the First ; so that it became a retreat for the 
dregs of society, who sought security from the punish- 
ment which they had incurred for their misdeeds. 
Fraudulent debtors hiding from their creditors, 
swindlers, bullies, thieves, base women, gamesters, and 
the lowest class of rufiians, took up their abode there. 
Their ranks were recruited by hopeless and abandoned 
wretches, who, from having been the victims of 
unscrupulous adventurers who dwelt in the locality, 
took up the business of decoys to strangers who 
wandered, or were enticed, into the foul and perilous 
dens of those lanes and aUeys. The inhabitants of this 
region, dissolute and destitute, were able to lie con- 



XY.] ALS'ATIA. 307 

cealed from tlie officers of the law, or to defy efforts 
made to arrest them for crniies Vv^hich were of almost 
daity occurrence within the limits of " the liberty." 

To these were added reckless adventurers who 
had deserted, or returned, from serving in the 
inefficient force reluctantly sent by James to recruit 
the army of his son-in-law, the Elector Palatine. These 
semi-mihtary, but not always courageous, scoundrels, 
gave to the locality the cant name of Alsatia. 

This border-land beyond law and order was called 
after the territory of Alsatia, the frontier province of 
France, on the Rhine, well loiown to soldiers in the 
Low Country as a frequent scene of hostilities in defiance 
of the laws and claims of the adjoining Powers, which 
were under a settled Government, and may thus be 
said to have been represented by Fleet Street, and 
especially b}^ the Temple, the seat of law adjoining 
Whitefriars. 

Ram Alley, Mitre Court, and an adjoining lane, 
called by the cant name of Lombard Street, repre- 
sented the mam portion of Alsatia ; and the locality 
maintained its evil notoriety till late in the reign of 
William IIL, when an Act of Parliament was passed 
for the suppression of " all such pretended privileged 
places upon penalties."' 

Speaking of this, Strype says : — " This place was 
formerly, since its building in houses, inhabited by 
gentry ; but some of the inhabitants taking upon them 
to protect persons from arrests, upon a pretended 
privilege belonging to the place, the gentry left it, and 
it became a sanctuary unto the inhabitants, which 
V 2 



308 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XY. 

they kept up by force against law and justice; so 
that it was sufficiently crowded with such disabled 
and loose kind of lodgers. 

" But, however, upon a great concei n of debt, the 
sheriff, with the posse coraitatus, forced his way in to 
make a search, and yet to little purpose ; for the time 
of the sheriff's coming not being concealed, and they 
having notice thereof, took flight either to the Mint, 
in Southwark — another such place — or some other 
private place, until the hurly-burly was over and 
then they returned." 

In Otway's play (1681) The Soldier of Fortune, 
and in Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia (1688), this 
notorious precinct holds a promment pare ; and in the 
latter the descriptions of the dramatis personce 
indicate the characters of the inhabitants. Headers of 
Sir Walter Scott will remember the vivid picture of 
Alsatia in '' The Fortunes of Nigel," and the graphic 
description of the locality, the aspect of the shops, and 
the lively doings of the City apprentices, who feared 
neither Alsatian bully, " pert Templar," nor Court 
gallant. 

Conflicts between the Templars and their un- 
savoury neighbours in Whitefriars were frequent, and 
often resulted in serious injuries. Any attempt by the 
gamesters, bullies and thieves of Alsatia to invade the 
precinct of the Temple was instantly resented, and the 
intruders would at once be assailed in a fashion which 
mostly drove them back to their own quarter, where 
the clash of steel, the cries, yells, and curses of 
men, the shrill shrieks of women, and, perhaps, the 



XV.] THE FELLOWS OF TEE LXXS OF COVET. 309 

occasional sound of a pistol shot, would show that a 
desperate struggle was going on, in which the con- 
stables were mostly reluctant to interpose. 

James the First, in one of his speeches in the 
Star Chamber, declared, in reference to the proclama- 
tion against the enormous increase of visitors and 
occupants of houses, that only three classes of people 
had a right to settle in London — the coiutiers, the 
citizens, and the gentlemen of the Inns of Court. 
As at that time there were at each Inn of Court 
about ISO '•' fellows " studvinof law. as well as sixty 
barristers and twenty readers, the law;\'ers made a 
very considerable contingent, when Ave remember that 
later, in 1631, the Lord Mayor, in answer to a question 
from the Pri^y Coimcil, computed '• the niunber of 
mouths'" in the City of London and the hberty to 
be 130.280. In the followino- year. 1632. Air. Palmer, 
a large landholder in Sussex, was fined £1,000 by 
the Star Chamber for hving in London (in one year) 
beyond the period prescribed for the residence of 
country gentlemen visiting the metropolis. 

Amidst all the tumidt and conflict in the pm*- 
lieus of AVhitefi'iars and the Temple, the rethed 
and secluded portion of the latter does not seem 
to have been ^reatlv disturbed, and the learned 
Selden, in his chambers in Paper Buildings, ptu'sued 
his studies, and sent forth his wise and witty essays 
and savings without other molestation except from 
the censorship of the press, ordered by a king whose 
jealousy, suspicion, and self-conceit made it chflicult 
for any author so to trim his sails as to steer clear of 



310 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XT. 

punishment by fine, imprisonment, or tlie burning of 
his books. As to excisions, they were so numerous 
that few books, either serious or satirical, except 
those by the King himself, or by his order, appeared 
as they were originall}^ written. Printers were kept 
in constant apprehension lest they should incur the 
royal displeasure and perhaps lose their ears ; and 
James, whose belief in his own ability to detect 
heresy and sedition Avas as strong as his belief in 
witchcraft, devoted as much time as he could spare 
from the favourite of whom he was afraid and the 
bottle which supported his courage and weakened his 
resolution, to the ordination of the literature, as well 
as of the law and the Gospel, of the country. 



CHAPTER XYI. 

EARLY NEWSPAPERS AND PAMPHLETS. 

The Mercuries — Scurrilous News-letters — Pepys in Fleet Street— His 
Diary — The Court — The Stage— Prize Fights— The Eump — 
Coaches— Elias Ashmole — Freemasonry — Lilly, the Astrologer — 
Roasting the Rumps in Fleet Street — The Great Fire — St, Dun- 
stan's and the Griants— Ned Ward— Cowper — The Booksellers' 
Tokens — The Rainbow — The Cock — Tennyson in the Highway 
of Letters— Will Waterproof — The Violet of a Legend amidst 
the Chops and Steaks — Pepys Making Merry at the Cock Tavern 
— Bankers in Fleet Street — The Grab of the Stuarts— Child's 
Bank — Christopher Wren — Titus Gates — Roger North at the 
Green Dragon — Petitioners and Abhorrers — Burning the Pope 
at Temple Bar — The New Temple Bar — The Heads above it — 
Goldsmith and Johnson — Aubrey — Dryden — Great Preachers in 
Fleet Street— Will's Coffee House— Addison— Defoe. 

In speaking of Fleet Street as the Highway of Letters 
it must be remembered that it is only in the later 
part of its history that it has become the Highway 
of Newspapers, Though it is usually believed that 
the first newspaper was the English Mercurie, printed 
by Christopher Baker, printer to Queen Elizabeth, 
and containing some intimations of what Avas going 
on in the world after the defeat of the Spanish 
Armada, there is considerable doubt as to the 
authenticity of the date of that publication, two of 
the existing three copies being printed in com- 
paratively modern type, and the third, a manu- 
script, showing evidences of belonging to the 18th 
century. 

Nor would the small quarto pamphlets occasionally 



312 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYI. 

published as " packets of news " be regarded as 
having much resemblance to the modern news- 
paper. During part of the time of the Thirty Years' 
War, the desire of the people of England to learn 
what was being done led to the conversion of the 
irregular pamphlet into a weekly publication, en- 
titled. The Certain Neivs of the Present Week. 
Similar pamphlets followed, and were continued in 
the time of Charles I. ; but, as we have already 
noted, it was during the Civil War that the small 
quarto Diurnals and Mercuries, many of them 
rather political pamphlets and essaj^s than actual 
news, were scattered broadcast, though they were 
not all printed in London but came from the 
various towns involved in the strife, and from 
the printing presses attached to the respective forces 
of the King and the Parliament. 

There were a good many Mercuries among 
them, as well as News, Tidings, and Specictl 
Passages, from Hull, York, Ireland, and other places, 
and some of the papers were distributed three 
times a week, many of these being satires or pas- 
quinades, and few of them remarkable for literary 
ability or considerable wit. 

It has been truly said that the period from the 
middle of the 17 th to the middle of the 18th century 
was the age of pamphlets, and the succeeding period 
has been the age of periodicals and newspapers. 
The publications of the former period, professing to 
give information of current events in political affairs, 
were news books, and were called so. The}- were 



XYI.] NEWS LETTEB.S AND GAZETTES. 



313 



partisan sheets, and their news was more like the 
gossip of a somewhat scurrilous London letter, or 
the leader in a rather unscrupulous weekly news- 
paper of later times. Mercurius Britannicus, Mercu- 
rius Mastix, Heraditus Ridens, Democritus Ridens, 



\f^f t' ' p • 



*i * M% -J3i 










BOASTING THE RUMPS IN FLEET STEEET AT THE EESTORATION {p. 324). 

{From an old print.) 



and the intelligences professing to give local, provin- 
cial, or foreign news, devoted a considerable portion 
of the small space at disposal to satire or abuse. 

Sir Roger L'Estrange, who had returned to 
England under the Cromwellian Act of Indemnity, 
set up The Public Intelligencer after the Restoration, 
but it differed little from other news pamphlets, and 
was relinquished in 1665, when the Oxford Gazette, 
published by the Government while the Court was 
at Oxford to avoid the plague, was brought to 



314 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTER8. [XYI 

London and re-named The London Gazette, a title 
which it has maintained ever since. This was, per- 
haps, the nearest approach to the modern newspaper, 
until Daniel Defoe, in 1719, helped to start the 
Daily Post, to which he was a brilliant anony- 
mous contributor, as he was to other papers pubHshed 
at the same period. Defoe may be said to have been 
the first of those who understood what is now known 
as journalism, and from his pungent and prolific pen 
a constant succession of " leading articles," advocating 
broad and advanced views, appeared in the periodical 
literature of that age. His Revieiu, like its suc- 
cessors in the time of Addison, Steele, and Swift, 
bore more resemblance to the magaziae than to 
regular newspapers, like the London Daily Post and 
General Advertiser, published in 1737, six years after 
his death, the General Advertiser, issued in 1744, 
when Samuel Johnson, thirty-five years of age, Avas 
writing for the Gentleman's Magazine, and the 
Public Advertiser (in 1752), to which Henry Field- 
ing was a contributor, and in which the " Letters of 
Junius " appeared. 

Among those who were habitues of Fleet Street 
at the time that Monk marched his army into 
London, and for ten 3^ears afterwards, the most fami- 
liar, though not the most conspicuous, figure was 
that of the man of whom we spoke in the last 
chapter, and whose diary is to modern readers the 
most interesting of all gossiping records — Samuel 
Pepys — who, as Clerk of the Acts to the Admiralty, 
had constant opportunities of observing the vices 



XVL] PEFYS. 315 

and depravity of the Court and of the King, and 
has left an account of the manners and social aspects 
of the period. " Pepys' Diary," not being intended for 
publication, was written in a kind of cryptograph, or 
shorthand, and was, within living memory, translated 
after being discovered in the library at Magdalen 
College, Cambridge, where the writer had deposited it. 

Living first in Axe Yard, Westminster, then in 
Seething Lane, near the Admiralty Office, and after- 
wards in York Place, Buckingham Street, Strand, 
the plump, pleasant little gentleman, who was such 
an accomplished musician, so fond of going to the 
play, and such an enthusiastic sight-seer in the 
intervals of his honest and assiduous attention to the 
duties of his office, must have been well known, and 
his broad-skirted suit, his white suit with silver 
lace, and the rest of his attire, of which he gives such 
amusing particulars, were to be seen pretty often at 
the Mitre and other taverns, where he dined well, 
but frugally, as a hon vivant should, when he was not 
entertaining friends at home, or visiting at all sorts 
of places, including the Wardrobe, where Lord 
Sandwich had taken up his abode, or at some of the 
houses of the nobility whom he met at Whitehall 
and at Westminster. 

Almost the first entry in the diary relates to the 
time before the coming of the King, when the Rump 
Parliament was still sitting, with Lenthall as Speaker, 
and Barebones, the leather seller of Fleet Street, 
was a leader of the "fanatics." Even Pepys calls 
them fanatics, though he must have had something 



316 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYI 

of a struggle to get over his Presbyterian training. 
He does as other people do, in respect of looking after 
his own interest, by exhibiting loyalty to the Court 
and his o^vn festive and somewhat irregular inclina- 
tions cause him to take " mighty pleasure " in gazing 
at shows, spectacles, entertainments, and assemblies 
of the Court beauties at Whitehall and elsewhere, 
to write in terms of somewhat questionable admira- 
tion of Lady Castlemaine and pretty Nell, and to 
repeat, not always in refined language (but we must 
remember that the diary was not intended for publi- 
cation), stories not to the credit of the King, 
the Duke of York, or the Court circle. We must, 
however, give him the credit of admiring the 
beauty of his really handsome young wife, when 
comparing her with other women, and of attending 
public worship with as great regularity as he visits 
the playhouses, or goes to witness a prize fight or 
any other spectacle by which his insatiable curiosity 
is excited. 

Certainly Pepys, in his diary, throws a strong side- 
light on the abominably dissolute character of the 
King and the dull debauchery of his brother, the 
Duke of York, afterwards James 11. It has also 
been remarked that, though the self-conscious, prig- 
gish little Clerk of the Admiralty, the jwoUge of the 
by no means immaculate Lord Sandwich, shows little 
regard for the memory of the Lord Protector, during 
whose rule he was bred and " brought up," his refer- 
ences to Cromwell would supply a better and more 
truly respectful estimate of the gTeat man's character 



XYI.] HUDIBBAS. 317 

than would be furnished by quotation from his most 
able panegyrists. 

It may have been a deeply-seated appreciation 
of the early influences under which he was educated, 
as well as a personal inability to comprehend the 
broad but subtle satire of Butler, which prevented 
his appreciation of the pungent wit and odd vagrant 
humour of " Hudibras." On December 26th, 1662, 
he wrote: — "To the Wardrobe. Hither came Mr. 
Battersby ; and we, falling into discourse of a new 
book of drollery in use, called 'Hudebras,' I would 
needs so find it out, and met with it at the Temple ; 
cost me 2s. 6d., but when I came to read it, it is 
so silly an abuse of the Presbyter Knight going 
to the warrs that I am ashamed of it ; and by-and- 
by, meeting of Mr. Townsend at dinner, I sold it 
to him for 18d." 

But on the 6th of February we find him at a 
bookseller's in the Strand buying another copy, 
" it being certainly some ill humour to be so against 
that which all the world cries up to be the example 
of wit ; for which I am resolved once more to read 
him and see whether I can find it or no." 

He did not succeed in persuading himself that 
there was much wit in "Hudibras," though he read 
the first part three times, and horroived, instead of 
buying, the second part, in St. Paul's Churchyard 
at his bookseller's, where he afterwards bought it, 
along with some other books (including Fuller's 
" Worthies ") " all of good use or serious pleasure." 

There are ample evidences that Pepys had an 



3ia THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYI. 

open mind and was willing to test his conclu- 
sions, but he had no great gift of humour, and, 
from his repeated remarks, evidently could not 
appreciate the finer and most imaginatiye plays of 
Shakspeare. Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair and 
the Silent Woman were more within his compass, 
though he was an assiduous reader, a fair scholar 
(having completed his education at Oxford), and a 
man of acute observation for passing events and 
peculiarities of character. It is amusing to read 
his remarks, not only on plays and the compan}^ 
on and before the stage, but on sermons and 
preachers. On the 9th of November, 1662^ he 
writes, " (Lord's Day) — \Yalked to my brother's, where 
my wife is, calling at many churches, and then to 
the Temple, hearing a bit there, too, and observing 
that in the streets and churches the Sunday is 
kept in appearance as well as I have known it at 
any time." 

As a series of vivid sketches of the manners 
of the time and the aspects of the City immediately 
after the Restoration, Pepys' Diary is invaluable. 
It must be remembered that considerable changes 
had taken place during the later years of the 
Commonwealth and the Protectorate. 

Though Milton was the Censor of the Press under 
the latter regime, it may be supposed, not only that 
he exercised his authority with just regard to the 
"liberty of prophesying," but that he himself wrote 
a good many of the articles that appeared in the 
news sheets. It must be remembered that the Star 



XYI.] DEMOLITION OF THEATRES. 319 

Chamber liad been abolished in 1641, but after the 
Restoration Charles II. and his Ministers continued 
to clap a good many people into prison, and judges 
too often suborned juries. Whipping at the post or 
the cart's tail was frequent, the pillory was in full 
swing, and the Fleet Prison received many whose 
debts were made the instruments for political 
punishments. The theatres had been pulled do^vn 
after the suppression of stage plays in 1642. Those 
in Salisbury Court, in Drury Lane (the Cockpit 
and the Phoenix), Blackfriars, and Bankside had 
disappeared. Those in Salisbury Court and Drury 
Lane, which had been demolished b}^ companies of 
soldiers in 1649, were afterwards rebuilt, as we have 
seen. The more rigid Puritan denunciation of stage 
plays was not so powerfid as to prevent a revival of 
the stage by Sir William Davenant in 1652, and the 
introduction of operas at the same date, two years 
before Cromwell was made Lord Protector. There 
can be little doubt that his Highness was a patron 
of music, and that he was above the narrow preju- 
dices which led many of the sectaries, who gave 
him continual trouble, to denounce all dramatic 
representations and all meetings for amusement 
and the lighter kind of recreation. The death of 
the Protector, fifteen months after he had been 
raised to that office, set everything in confusion 
again, and the Restoration, in 1660, though it did not 
at once demoralise the drama — for the plays of 
Shakspeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Cowley and 
others still held the stage — began that decadence 



320 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYI. 

in morals which degraded the theatre for many 
years. Dryden had begun to write for the stage 
before Pepys was very far in his record of play- 
going, and though Tom Killigrew, the boon com- 
panion of Charles 11. , famous for his witty and 
indecorous stories, and the loose plays which he 
introduced at his theatres, took the taste of the 
depraved courtiers, there were still admirers of the 
more legitimate dramas, Pepys, who was serious- 
minded, in spite of his love for novelty and amuse- 
ment, being one who did not altogether abandon 
his early training. 

It may be mentioned that coaches had become 
common at the time of the Restoration, and the 
lumbering leathern vehicles went up and down the 
Highway of Letters, where occasionally the more 
fashionable "glass coach," a lighter coach, with 
windows of talc or glass, also spattered mud from 
the gutters over pedestrians, who shrank to the wall 
that they might avoid the polluting shower. 

The first hackney coach stand had been set up, in 
1634, at the Maypole, in the Strand, a few paces from 
Temple Bar, by Captain Baily, a sea-captain, Sedan 
chairs being introduced by Sir Saunders Duncomb, 
about the same time. The first sedan chairs had 
appeared as private conveyances at an earlier date. 
They were brought from the town after which they 
were named, a place which has become famous in 
these later days as the scene of the disastrous battle 
in which Napoleon III. was defeated by the German 
invaders. In January, 1635, a proclamation was 



XYL] 



JOHN LOGKE—ELIAS ASHMOLE. 



321 



, issued to restrain the multitude and the promiscuous 
use of coaches about London and Westminster. 
In 1662 it was ordered that the number of hackney 
coaches should not exceed 400, but in 1694 they 
increased to 700, 
and were largely 
augmented in sub- 
sequent years, 
though it seems 
strange that in 
1701 they amount- 
ed to only 1,000. In 
1710, the year 
when, on the 1st of 
March, the first 
number of the 
" Spectator " was 
published, and Ad- 
dison and Steele 
were representa- 
tives 01 tne new old st. DuisrsTAN's clock. 
departure in peri- 
odical literature, there were 800 hackney coaches and 
200 hackney chairs in London, and the number was 
but little increased for thirty years after that date. 

Among the people Pepys may have met in Fleet 
Street was John Locke, whose essay on the Human 
Understanding was written in, or at all events dated 
from, Dorset Court (1689). Elias Ashmole, the 
famous antiquary, lived in Middle Temple Lane, 
where his fine library and collection of coins and 




322 TSE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYI. 

curiosities, wliicli he had been accumulating for thirty 
years, were destroyed by fire. 

On the 23rd of April, 1661, Pepys, in his black silk 
suit, the first day he had put it on that year, went in a 
coach to dine with the Lord Mayor, where he met " a 
great deal of honourable company," and at table 
talked with Esquire Ashmole, just appointed Windsor 
Herald, who assured him that " frogs and many 
insects do fall from the sky ready formed." Ashmole 
was a member of the Society of Astrologers, one of 
the earliest members of the Royal Society, and a 
famous Freemason. Not long ago a Masonic function 
was held in Sweden for his honourable remem- 
brance, and the Lodge of Quatuor Coronati has re- 
produced a curious Masonic hieroglyph, in which a 
tree (the ash), with a little animal at its foot, some- 
what resembling a mole, seems to be a rebus on the 
name of this celebrated master of the craft. 

In the previous year (1660), the Court being in 
mourning for the Duke of Gloucester, brother of 
Charles II., Pepys had " bought a pair of short black 
stockings, to wear over a pair of silk ones," to match 
his black silk suit, and had for the first time taken a 
cup of tea, "a China drink," of which he had never 
drunk before. A few days afterwards he records that 
he went to Lilly's, the astrologer, where he was well 
received, there being " a clubb " that night among his 
friends. Among the rest was " Esquire Ashmole, who 
I found was a very ingenious gentleman. ... I 
home by coach, taking Mr. Eooker with me, who did 
tell me a great many fooleries which may be done by 



XYI.] BOASTING THE BUMPS. 323 

nativities, and blaming Mr. Lilly for electing to please 
his friends and to keep in with the times as he did 
formerly, to his great dishonour, and not according to 
the rules of art, by which he could not well erre as he 
had done." 

The evident absence of all preparation, or writing 
for effect, gives the Diary an air of frankness and 
veracity which could scarcely have been possible in 
memoranda intended for publication. It is greatly to 
the credit of the man himself that some of the re- 
cords — those of the domestic kind — disclose a certain 
tenderness and gratitude, which redeems much that 
appears to be mean and selfish in the small-beer 
chronicle. The more historical portion of them may 
be said to commence with the failure of Richard Crom- 
well, the opposition manifested by the citizens and 
the populace to the restored " Rump " Parliament, and 
the rumours that went this way and that with regard 
to the intentions of Monk when he marched his forces 
into the City and, in his stolid, silent way, waited to 
notice the temper of the people before declaring for 
Prince Charles, with whom he was in communication. 
The Mayor and aldermen had offered their houses for 
Monk and his officers ; the soldiers were everywhere 
received with acclamations in the streets, and were 
plied with drink and money ; Cheapside was aglow 
with bonfires ; everywhere the church bells were ring- 
ing, because Monk was in favour of issuing new writs 
to fill up the House of Parliament, and refused to obey 
the order of the Rump to disarm the citizens and 
take away their charter. Fleet Street was ruddy with 
v 2 



324 TSE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYI. 

the glare of bonfires, of wliich tliere were several 
between St. Dunstan's and Temple Bar. At Strand 
Bridge Bepys counted thirty-one fires, while every- 
where there was shouting and drinking, and at the 
bonfires butchers and others expressed their pohtical 
sentiments by roasting rumps of beef, and at the 
Maypole, in the Strand, made a great clatter by ring- 
ing a peal with then' knives to call attention to the 
roast. On Ludgate Hill a man was turning a spit 
with a rump tied upon it, while another man basted 
it. At one end of Fleet Street it might have been 
thought that the HighAvay of Letters was on fire, and 
the heat Avas almost suffocating. 

This was on the 11th of February, 1659-60, but it 
is not the first reference to Fleet Street, for the first 
entry in the Diary, on the 1st of January that year, 
records: — "(Lord's Day) — This morning (we living 
lately in the garret) I rose, put on my suit with great 
skirts, having lately not worn any other clothes but 
them, went to Mr. Gunning's chapel at Exeter House. 
. . . Dined at home in the garret, Avhere my wife 
dressed the remains of a turkey, and in the doing of 
it she burnt her hand. I staid at home the whole 
afternoon, looking over my accounts ; then went with 
my wife to my father's, and in going observed the 
great posts which the City workmen set up at the 
conduit in Fleet Street." This conduit, with others, 
was soon to run wine ; ale was to be broached in the 
streets ; Fleet Street was to be furnished with stages 
and balconies, beneath the windows, decorated with 
gay garlands and sumptuous hangings; the street 



XYI.] THE GREAT FIEE. 325 

itself barricaded, that a great concourse of people 
might look on at the splendid procession by which 
the King was accompanied from the Tower to ^^Hiite- 
hall, the day before his coronation, on the 23rd of 
April, 1661. Pepys, attired in a velvet coat, the first 
day that he had put it on, though he had had it 
for six years, was in the City with other good com- 
pany, among whom was '' Sh' W. Pen." It was im- 
possible, he said, "to relate the glory of this day 
expressed in the clothes of them that rid, especially 
the Knights of the Bath and their esquu'es. The 
streets were all gravelled, the houses, hung with 
carpets before them, made brave show, with the ladies 
out of the windows. So glorious was the show ^ith 
gold and silver that we were not able to look at it, 
our eyes at last being so much overcome." 

Of the two great calamities — though they have 
been regarded as a recurrent calamity and its remedy 
— the Great Plague and the Great Fh-e — there is no 
occasion to speak with special reference to Fleet 
Street. Not only in the chronicles of Pepys, but m 
the pages of Daniel Defoe, we meet with descriptions 
which leave little to be said that is either striking or 
original, though Defoe was born only about a year 
before London was devastated by the fell disease of 
the ravages of which he gives so vivid an account. 

The Highway of Letters, as we know, was destroyed 
as far as the west corner of Chancery Lane, on one 
side, and the Temple Exchange Coffee House, close to 
the Temple, on the other. The Fleet and Bridewell, St. 
Bride's Church, Salisburv House, and the remaining 



326 TEE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYI. 

buildings of the Wliitefriars, numerous taverns (in- 
cluding the ancient Horn tavern, which had belonged 
to the Goldsmiths' Company from the reign of 
Henry HI., and was replaced by Anderton's Coffee 
House, to be in its turn replaced recently by Ander- 
ton's Hotel), coffee-houses, ancient Inns, or mansions 
of the nobility and clergy, perished in a heap of 
burning cinders. St. Dunstan's Church, in Fleet 
Street, remained, a good, handsome, freestone building, 
with a fair dial hanging over the street, as Strype 
informs us. This clock was not set up till 1671, and 
was the work of Mr. Thomas Harris, who lived at the 
end of Water Lane. He received £35 and the former 
clock of the church. At the same time two famous 
figures, representing giants or savages wielding clubs, 
were placed within a frame of architecture, and by 
the motion of the clockwork struck the quarters on 
two bells hanging within reach of their clubs. 

Ned Ward, who kept a punch-house in Fulwood's 
Rents, Holborn, about 1723, and wrote "The London 
Spy," a book to which, notwithstanding its coarse- 
ness, most writers on London are indebted for graphic 
and grotesque descriptions of the manners of his 
time, wrote about a puppet show — 

" We added two to the number of fools and stood 
a little, making our ears do penance to please our 
eyes with the concerted motion of their (the puppets') 
heads and hands, which moved to and fro with as 
much deliberate stiffness as the two wooden horo- 
logists at St. Dunstan's when they strike the quarters." 

A very different man William Co^vper, who, when 



XYI.] 8T. DUNSTAN'S. 327 

he was a student in the Temple, suffering from the 
melancholy mental affliction which led him to retire 
into the seclusion of Olney, wrote in " The Task " — 

" "When Labour and when Dulness, club in hand, 
Like the two figures at St. Dunstan's stand, 
Beating- alternately in measured time 
The clockwork tintinnabulum of rhyme, 
Exact and regular the sounds wiU be, 
But such mere quarter- strokes are not for me." 

The old church was taken down in 1831-1833, 
and the present one built by Mr. Shaw, who copied 
the steeple of St. Helen at York. The figures were 
bought by the Marquis of Hertford, and removed to 
his villa in Regent's Park. It is said that they lately 
occupied a place in the grounds of Mr. Hucks Gibbs, 
in the same locality. 

The statue of Queen Elizabeth, over St. Dunstan's 
Church doorway, formerly adorned the west front of 
Lud Gate, which, with two or three other principal 
City gates then remaining, was demolished in 1760. 

Before the Great Fire the booksellers' shops were 
both in Fleet Street and St. Paul's Churchyard, 
Paternoster Row being the locality of the lacemen 
and silk mercers. We find Pepys buying books both 
at the Temple and at St. Paul's ; but after the fire 
and the destruction of Stationers' Hall, the Church- 
yard and the Church of St. Faith, beneath St. Paul's, 
in the crypt of which many of the stationers and 
booksellers placed their stocks, the trade was for a 
time scattered from that neighbourhood, and on the 
rebuilding of London the business of the booksellers 
was to some extent transferred to the Row, while a 



328 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS, [XYI. 

few of the silkmen took possession of sliops in the 
Churchyard. 

The Churchyard of St. Dunstan's, facing Fleet 
Street, and fitly representing the Highway of Letters, 
was nearly built-in by booksellers' and publishers' 
shops. We have already spoken of Smethwick 
"under the Diall," and Marriott, who published the 
first edition of Izaak Walton's " Compleat Angler " 
there, and advertised it, price 18d., in the Mercurius 
Politicus, May, 1653. 

Among the famous footsteps in Fleet Street are to 
be included those of Dr. Donne the poet, and Dr. 
Thomas White, founder of Sion College, who were 
both vicars of St. Dunstan's. And among the 
printers and booksellers of Fleet Street at this 
period, besides those already noted, were Charles 
Harper, next door to the Crown in Chancery 
Lane, near Serjeants' Inn, and at the "Flower 
de Luce," over against St. Dunstan's Church ; Daniel 
Pakeman, at the sign of the Rainbow ; and Thomas 
Lee, at the Turk's Head, over against Fetter Lane 
(1677), where Sam Keble seems to have succeeded 
him in 1700. But the publishers had spread, and 
their numbers greatly increased in the Strand, St. 
Paul's Churchyard, Paternoster Row, Cheapside, The 
Poultry, and Holborn. 

Fleet Street, like other highways of London, was 
still full of signs, and with the signs of the various 
shops were associated the tokens, or metal medals, 
issued by tradesmen and tavern-keepers, to represent 
small change — pence, halfpence, and farthings — and 



XVI.] 



TRADESMEN'S TOKENS. 



329 



to be exchanged for commodities at tlie counters of 
those who issued them. Without going into the 







CHiLDs' BANK IN 1850 {p. 33i). (FroM a Drawing hy Flndley.) 

origin or remote history of tradesmen's tokens, it 
may be recorded that the scarcity of small coin and 



330 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XVI. 

the objection to cut a penny in halves, or quarters, to 
represent halfpence and farthings (or four things), 
gave rise to the provision by shopkeepers of tokens, 
which were of recognised value at the place of issue, 
if not in general exchange. 

In the time of Henry VIII. there were a number 
of leaden tokens in London. Queen Elizabeth, who 
improved the previously debased coinage, gave per- 
mission to certain towns, and to some individuals, 
to strike copper farthings and half-farthings ; but 
James I. gave to his favourites the privilege of issuing 
copper coins or pledges, at a considerable profit on 
the weight of metal or of debased metal, and the 
circulation was made compulsory by an Order in 
Council. Charles I. carried this scandalous grant of 
privileges still further, and debased farthings or 
tokens were minted at a house in Lothbury, which 
consequently gave its name to Tokenhouse Yard. 

Evelyn mentions " the tokens which every tavern 
and tippling-house, in the days of late anarchy 
among us, presumed to stamp and utter for im- 
mediate exchange, as they were passable through 
the neighbourhood, which, though seldom reaching 
further than the next street or two, may happily, in 
after times, come to exercise and busie the learned 
critic what they should signifie." 

At the time of the Kestoration, and at a later 
date, tokens were in considerable use, and were con- 
tinued for some time, though Charles II. ordered 
some good copper farthings to be issued. There are 
some curious collections of tokens in the British 



XYI.] OLD TAVERN SIGNS. 331 

Museum, the Bodleian Library, and the Guildhall 
Museum, and the private coins mostly bear the 
name or initials of the tradesman who issued them, 
the date, and the sign of his shop. Those belonging 
to Fleet Street were mostly tavern tokens, and bore 
the sign and superscription of the Bear, the Bull's 
Head, the Sugar Loaf, the Cock, the Rainbow, the 
Dragon, the Hercules Pillars, the Castle, the White 
Hart, the Jerusalem, the Golden Angel, the Boar's 
Head, the Three Nuns, the Mitre, the Feathers, 
the King's Head, the Temple, the Three Squirrels, 
the Unicorn. Some of these signs survive to this 
day, and have taken a new lease of life, notably 
the BainboAv, near the Temple Gate, established as a 
coffee-house, and in 1657 kept by one James Farr, a 
barber, who was prosecuted, by the inquest of St. 
Dunstan's in the West, "for making and selhng a 
sort of liquor called coffee, as a great nuisance and 
prejudice of the neighbourhood." 

Groom's, next door to the entrance of the passage 
of the Rainbow, is now, as it long has been, famous 
for its coffee and tea. It became the resort of Fleet 
Street coffee drinkers at a later date, when the 
Rainbow became a tavern famous for haunches of 
venison, saddles of mutton, and other substantial fare, 
served at certain hours of the day, along with excel- 
lent wine, ale, and punch. It has now been ac- 
quired by Mr. SchuUer, of the Cafe de Paris, at 
the foot of Ludgate HiE.. 

The Cock, which was once equally famous for 
its chops, steaks, rashers, welsh rarebits, fine old port. 



332 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYI. 

and supremely good ale, once stood nearly opposite the 
Kainbow. Even till a recent date it preserved its 
old characteristics ; its " boxes/' or partitioned seats 
of dark polished mahogany, its portentous carved 
chimney-piece, said, without much warrant, to have 
been the work of Grinhng Gibbons, its sawdusted floor 
and ancient knives and platters — we might almost say 
its ancient " drawer," or head- waiter — and its efiSgy of 
a Brobdingnagian rooster, in full crow, beside the 
entrance in Fleet Street, survived, and have been 
celebrated by the late Lord Tennyson, whose "Will 
Waterproof" eulogises the plump head-waiter at the 
Cock, the wine, the viands, and the long reputation of 
the historical tavern. 

While the earlier pages of this gossiping record 
were passing through the press, the lamented death 
of the Poet Laureate placed a nation in mourning, 
and added to the sadder memories of the Highway 
of Letters. Though it is long since Alfred Tennyson 
was among the frequenters of the famous thorough- 
fare, he has left an imperishable reference to the once 
famous tavern and — 

" The plump head-waiter at ' the Cock,' 
To which I most resort." 

He made a halo shine about 

*' The waiter's hands, that reach 

To each his perfect pint of stout — 
His proper chop to each." 

He made 

" The violet of a legend blow 

Among the chops and steaks." 



XYL] FLEET STREET G0LDSMITS8. 333 

Tlie Cock has flown across the road now, and 
stands at the entrance of a passage leading to the 
tavern which has taken the sign, and some of the 
business, of the legendary resort of famous represent- 
atives of the Highway of Letters. 

To go no farther back than 1665, when the plague 
was in London, we find the Old Cock tavern closely 
associated with the farthing tokens of that time ; for 
The Intelligencer for July in that year contained an 
advertisement that "the master of the Cock and 
Bottle, commonly called The Cock, alehouse, at 
Temple Bar, hath dismissed his servants and shut up 
his house for this long vacation, intending (God 
willing) to return at Michaelmas next, so that all 
persons whatsoever, who have any accompts with the 
said master, or farthings belonging to the said house, 
are desu^ed to repair thither before the 8th of this 
instant July, and they shall receive satisfaction." 

In April, nearly three years afterwards, we find 
Mr. Samuel Pepys there, in rather sportive mood, 
having invited two ladies (one of them Mrs. Knipp, 
the actress) to supper, where they " drank, and eat a 
lobster, and sang, and were mightily merry." 

The Devil and St. Dunstan's tavern, within 
Temple Bar, had its token and device of St. Dunstan 
holding the Devil by the nose. By the bye, did Mrs. 
Pepys think of that device when she threatened to 
pinch her husband with the tongs, because of his 
attentions to Mrs. Knipp ? 

Among the most important of the signs in Fleet 
Street were those of the bankers and goldsmiths. 



334 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYI. 

That of Kicliard Blanchard and Francis Child (after- 
wards " Childs'," the oldest banking house in London), 
was distinguished by the sign of the Marigold, just 
within Temple Bar, on a site which is now difficult to 
distinguish. Childs, like other bankers in the time 
of Charles II., were goldsmiths with running cashes, 
and one of the partners. Alderman Backwell, was 
ruined on the shutting up of the exchequer by the 
profligate king, whose accounts for the sale of 
Dunkirk to the French remain among the records of 
the house. In the days of James I. and Charles I, 
wealthy persons and merchants deposited their money 
in the Mint, which was then within the Tower of 
London, or placed it with the principal goldsmiths, who 
also were custodians of plate and jewels. Charles I. 
seizing £200,000 of money in the Mint, and calling it 
" a loan," made depositors shy of that kind of security, 
and they transferred their deposits to the goldsmiths. 
Charles II. seized £1,300,000 deposited by the gold- 
smiths in the exchequer, in the faith that their 
property would be secure under a settled Government 
after the Restoration ; and though there was such an 
outcry that the embezzling King was obliged to pay 
six per cent, interest, the capital was not entirely 
repaid, even in the time of William III., when the 
interest had been reduced to three per cent., and the 
Bank of England was incorporated. 

In 1673-74 Major Pinckey, a goldsmith, lived at 
the Three Squirrels over against St. Dunstan's 
Church, and was succeeded by Goslings, afterwards 
Goslings and Sharpe. In 1693, Mr. Richard Hoare, 



XVI] A BI8TINGTI0N AND A DIFFEBENGE. 335 

goldsmith, at the sign of the Golden Bottle (Mr. 
James Hoare was a goldsmith, with a running cash at 
the Golden Bottle, in Cheapside), is mentioned in 
the London Gazette, and one of his debtors was the 
famous Lord Clarendon, who owed him £27 10s. 3d. 
for plate. 

The firm of Childs, the bankers, originated in the 
reign of Charles I, when Francis Child, the apprentice 
of William Wheeler, a goldsmith, whose shop was one 
door west of Temple Bar, married his master's 
daughter and became a partner in the business- 
" The Marygold," the sign of the house one door 
within Temple Bar, to which the business was removed 
when the firm became Blanch ard and Child, is prob- 
ably the device of Blanchard, as the original sign, 
French in decoration and design, bore the motto, 
" Ainsi r)ion dine!' The sign is still preserved by the 
modern representatives of the firm, and appears, or 
did lately appear, as the distinctive design on the 
cheques of Childs' bank. Childs' was the bank of 
the Court and the aristocracy. Prince Rupert had 
been a customer, and the King (Charles II) kept his 
cash there, or, rather, used to draw cash out in a 
reckless manner when he wanted money for one or 
other of his mistresses. Perhaps the same reply 
might have been given to him as Mr. Coutts at a later 
date gave to the Duke of York, who proposed his 
health as "my banker for upwards of thirty years." 
" I beg your Royal Highness's pardon; it is your Royal 
Highness who has done me the honour to keep my 
money for thirty years." 



336 TIW HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYI. 

At all events, the name of Child has become 
historical. Sir Francis Child, the second partner of the 
name, is he of whom we have just been speaking, and 
he became Lord Mayor, and represented the City in 
Parliament He died, at a good old age, in 1713, and 
was succeeded by his son. Sir Robert, at whose death 
the second Sir Francis succeeded to the dignities 
which then appeared to be attached to the family. 
His daughter married the grandson of Alderman 
Backwell, so that practical justice seems to have 
been done to the descendant of the formerly ruined 
partner ; and a grand-daughter married William 
Praed, a banker of Truro, who, nearly a century 
ago, also took up an abode and opened a bank at 
189, Fleet Street. 

The fire which devastated the City had left nothing 
of the former Highway of Letters, except a few 
houses by the Temple (Blanchard and Child's, the 
nearest to the Temple Bar), and some others opposite, 
between Chancery Lane and St. Dunstan's Church. 

The houses, as we have seen, had mostly con- 
sisted of wood and plaster ; such bricks as were used 
were poor in quality, and badly baked. The bulks, 
or shops where goods were set out for sale, were 
overhung by the upper storeys. Only a few of these 
ancient buildings now remain in London, but, not- 
withstanding their inconvenience and apparent in- 
security, they lasted pretty well, and, though mostly 
wanting in light and air, were often picturesque and 
prettily ornamented. 

The Fire of London had extended over nearly a 



XYI.J 



A LOST OPPORTUNITY. 



837 



square mile, and 13,000 houses — many of them 
spacious and handsome mansions — and eighty-nine 
churches were consumed, and lay in ruins. It was a 
great opportunity for re-building the City on a plan 
which would have made it second to none in Europe ; 
and Christopher Wren prepared a plan which would 




WEST FRONT OF TEMPLE BAR IN 1710. 



have achieved far more than has been done up to the 
present time, in making the highway from Temple 
Bar to St. Paul's, and the highway beyond it along 
Cheapside, a superb thoroughfare, flanked by a grand 
embankment, or terrace, on the river shore. This he 
was not permitted to carry out, or even to commence. 
Parsimony, including a regard for vested interests 
which would have had to be purchased, was displayed 
in the re-building of the City, as it was in the provision 



338 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYI. 

of ships for the navy, and other national works ; for 
the King grasped all the money he could beg, borrow, 
or steal, to squander it on the companions of his 
debaucheries. 

Wren, who had attained distinction in mathe- 
matics and experimental philosophy at Wadham 
College, Oxford (Pepys calls him Dr. Wren), became 
assistant to Sir John Denham, who had been ap- 
pointed Surveyor-general of his Majesty's Buildings, 
without any particular knowledge of the subject. 
Wren, however, soon became a practical and an 
eminent architect, and, before the fire occurred, had 
been requested by the Dean and Chapter of St. 
Paul's to survey the Cathedral. The fire saved him 
that trouble, but gave him the splendid oppor- 
tunity of building the vast structure Avhich has 
ever since been associated with his genius and enter- 
prise. 

Even in this magnificent work, however, he was 
hindered, and his designs were greatly frustrated 
by the penurious manner in which the payments 
were made. The first stone was laid on the 21st 
June, 1675, by the architect and his special lodge 
of Freemasons, of which he was Master, "the 
Lodge of St. Paul's," afterwards re-named the 
" Lodge of Antiquity," by which the trowel and 
mallet are still preserved. Wren was twice elected 
Grand Master of the English Freemasons. The last 
stone of St. Paul's was set up in 1710. During that 
long period of thirty-five years, Wren was constantly 
passing up and down Fleet Street to superintend his 



XVI.] FLEET STREET REBUILT. 339 

work, for -whicli lie received tlie miserable pittance of 
£200 a year : '• and for this/' as the Duchess of Marl- 
borough said, ■'•' he was content to be dragged up in 
a basket three or four times a week." 

Btit he had, at an early date after the fire, designed 
fifty of the clmrches which took the place of those 
that had perished. That of St. Bride, m Fleet 
Street, was com^^leted in 1680 : and so great had been 
his energy and untiring indttstry. that, in 1672, his 
services, unrequited by any adequate pajnnent, were 
rewarded by the honotir of laiighthood. Two years 
later he married a daughter of Sir John Coghill, and, 
after her death, a datighter of Viscount FitzAVilliam. 
He Hved far into the reigTi of George I., and died at 
the age of ninety-one. 

In rebuilding the City, the old Imes of streets 
were mostly preserved, and Fleet Street was as Httle 
calculated to accommodate the lumbering coaches 
and the carriages, often drawn by four or six gTeat 
Flemish horses, as it now is to receive its vast traflic 
of omnibuses, railway carriers' vans, cabs, carriages? 
and newspaper carts. 

The rebuilding, however, went on so rapidly that 
the admiration of foreigners was excited by it : and 
ordinary houses in the Hiohway of Letters, though 
far fi'om being either handsome, healthy, or commo- 
dious, and looking less pictiu'esque than those that had 
been demohshed, were more spacious and convenient, 
and were constructed of far better material than 
those which they replaced. Fleet Street was, in fact, 
much less remarkable for its improved dwellings than 



340 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYI. 

other parts of the City, where wealthy merchants 
expended large sums of money on mansions, the fine 
proportions and sumptuous internal decorations of 
which were evidences of luxury and refinement, 
which may still be traced even in the few rem- 
nants of old examples to be discovered in buildings 
long ago converted into offices and warehouses. 

Pep3^s had ceased to record the varying scenes 
and events in Avhich he took part, before the changes 
had been entirely effected. He tells us of the 
roasting of the rumps in Fleet Street, near Temple 
Bar ; but we have to gather information from another 
diarist of the demonstrations which took place when 
there was a reaction against Popery, and the perjuries 
of the infamous Titus Gates resulted in the execution 
of innocent persons, whom he denounced with un- 
blushing effrontery. 

It was suspected, truly enough, that the King, 
Avhen he had any serious thoughts of rehgion, was 
secretly attached to the Roman Catholic tenets and 
observance. It was known that his brother, the Duke 
of York, was a pronounced Papist, and it was beheved, 
also truly enough, that, should he succeed to the 
throne, he would endeavour to re-estabhsh popery 
in England. So great Avas the excitement, that 
Charles sent his brother away, to avoid irritating 
the populace by his presence in London, and was 
himseff alarmed lest he should be again " sent on his 
travels." 

In 1687, on the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's 
birth, the popular protest took the form of an 



XYI.] BUEXIXG THE POPE AT TEMPLE BAR. 341 

extraordinary demonstration. A turbulent multitude 
marclied in procession through the City to Temple 
Bar, and Roger North witnessed the extraordinary 
spectacle from the Green Dragon Tavern, and pub- 
hshed an account of it in his Exariien. 

It -was very dark when he and his friends posted 
themselves at the windows, "but we could perceive 
the street to fill, and the hum of the crowd grew 
louder and louder : and at length, with help of some 
hghts below, we could discern, not only upward to- 
wards the Bar, where the squib-war was maintained, 
but downward towards Fleet Bridge, the whole street 
was crowded with people, which made that which 
followed seem very strange ; for about eight at night 
we heard a din fi'om below which came up the street, 
continually increasing, till we could perceive a motion, 
and that was a row of stout fellows, that came 
shouldered together, cross the street, fi*om wall to 
wall, on each side. How the people melted away, I 
cannot tell, but it was plain those fellows made clear 
board, as if they had swept the street for what was to 
come after. They went along like a wave, and it was 
wonderful to see how the crowd made way. Behind 
this wave — which, as all the rest, had many hghts 
attending — there was a vacancy, but it rilled apace, 
till another like wave came up, and so four or five 
of these waves passed, one after another : and then 
we discerned more numerous hghts, and throats were 
opened with hoarse and tremendous noise, and with 
that advanced a pageant, borne along above the heads 
of the crowd, and upon it sat a huge Pope in pontijic- 



342 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYI. 

alibiis, in his chair, with a seasonable attendance for 
state ; but his premier minister, that shared most of 
his car, Avas II Signior Diavolo, a nimble little fellow, 
in a proper dress, that had a strange dexterity in 
climbing and winding about the chair, from one of 
the Pope's ears to the other. 

" The next pageant was a parcel of Jesuits, and after 
that (for there was always a decent space between 
them) came another, with some ordinary persons with 
' halters,' as I took it, about their necks, and one with 
a stenterophonic tube sounded ' Abhorrers ! Abhor- 
rers ! ' most infernally : and lastly, came one with a 
single person upon it, which some said was the 
pamphleteer. Sir Roger L'Estrange, some the King 
of France, some the Duke of York ; but certainly it 
was a very complaisant, civil gentleman, like the 
former, that was doing what everybody pleased to 
have him, and, taking all in good part, went on his 
way to the fire." 

Into this bonfire, near Temple Bar, the effigies 
were lowered and burned with much uproar, all 
except one, of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, the magis- 
trate before whom Gates had made a deposition, and 
whose body was found in a field behind Primrose Hill. 
It was evident that he had been murdered, though it 
was said at the time that some of the wounds had 
been inflicted after his death, and of course the 
murder was attributed to the Papists. The "Ab- 
horrers" were those who had, in an address to the 
court, declared their abhorrence of the " Petitioners," 
who were constantly appealing to the King to grant 



XYI.] THE LATH TEMPLE BAB. 343 

what they considered were their rights, in accordance 
with his promises at the Restoration. 

The members of the Green Ribbon Club — a Whig 
society, of which Lord Shaftesbury was said to be the 
head — met at their headquarters, the King's Head, at 
the east corner of Chancery Lane, on this day. 

The burning of the Pope at Temple Bar was con- 
tinued as a more or less regular observance for many 
years, and only ceased in the reign of George I. The 
Bar itself was the structure with which most of us 
were familiar till its removal, when it was superseded 
by the hideous griffin which now rears its ungainly 
form at the City boundary. 

The old Temple Bar — the house of timber and 
gateway described by Strype — had been taken down 
after the Fire of London, and in its place a structure 
of Portland stone, with a main gateway and two side- 
ways for foot-passengers, was built in 1670, from the 
designs of Wren. On the west, or Strand side, the 
statues of Charles I. and Charles II., in Roman garb, 
stood in two niches. Originally the royal arms were 
sculptured over the keystone on this side. On the 
eastern side were the statues of James I., and either 
Queen Elizabeth or James's queen, Anne of Denmark, 
it is not quite certain which, though the popular 
notion was in favour of Queen Elizabeth, and on 
Pope-burning days the statue was adorned with a 
gilt wreath. A slab over the eastern arch bore the 
inscription, "Erected in the year 1670, Sir Samuel 
Starling, Mayor; continued in the year 1671, Sir 
Richard Ford, Lord Mayor ; and finished in the year 



344 TEE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYI. 

1672, Sir George Waterman, Lord Mayor." The 
scrolls supporting the upper part of the structure, 
the fruit and flowers ornamenting the pediment, and 
the sculptured statues themselves were by no means 
imposing, and were the work of John Bushnell. 
Altogether there was a mean, dumpy look about 
the edifice, and perhaps no one would have much 
regretted its final disappearance, if it had not been 
replaced by a figure like nothing known to art or 
nature. The Bar had not even the sanction of anti- 
quity, and had become an obstruction no longer to be 
endured in the vast and increasing traffic. The chief 
historical interest which it could claim, apart from the 
recollection of the famous wayfarers who had passed 
through its narrow side arches, was the gruesome re- 
membrance of the heads and mutilated limbs of 
"traitors" which once surmounted the centre arch, 
fixed on iron spikes, and nodding and trembhng as 
heavy vehicles rumbled beneath. These were the 
horrible accessories of the trophies with w^hich 
Temple Bar was garnished Avhen the Sovereign 
visited the City, and the Lord Mayor and sheriffs, 
with their officers, went through the ceremony 
of closing the gates and re-opening them for the 
Monarch, to whom the keys were presented and 
the Civic Sword of State was offered, to be re- 
turned, with the stale compliment that they could 
not be in better hands than those of the civic officials. 
The stone was still white, the carvings of scrolls and 
cornucopia still sharp and clear, when the first section 
of a mutilated body was placed there — that of Sir 



XYI.] HEADS ON TEMPLE BAB. 345 

Thomas Armstrong, Master of the Horse to Charles 
II., who was imphcated in the real or pretended con- 
spiracy of the Rye House Plot, and was dealt with by 
the infamous Jeffreys, who sentenced him, on a record 
of outlawry, without trial, to be hung at Tyburn. His 
head was placed in AVestminster Hall, a quarter of 
the body was boiled in pitch and fixed above Temple 
Bar, the remainder was sent to Stafford, which Arm- 
strong had represented in Parliament. Sir William 
Parkyns, a Jacobite gentleman, of Warwickshire, and 
Sir John Friend, a wealthy brewer, of Aldgate, were 
executed for conspiring to seize and murder William 
III. while he was out hunting between Brentford and 
Turnham Green. The head of Parkyns, and the 
mangled remains of Friend, were placed upon Temple 
Bar. Then followed the heads and limbs of other 
conspirators, and there were five heads on the Bar 
when the execution, for the rebellion of 1745, added 
those of Colonel Francis Townley, and a young man 
named George Fletcher, son of a widow, a shopkeeper 
at Sahbrd. These were two of the nine rebels who 
were hanged on Kennington Common, one of whom 
was James Dawson (Jemmy Dawson), commemorated 
in Shenstone's pathetic ballad. 

On the 12th of August, 1746, these last two heads 
were placed over the Bar. Three days afterwards the 
elegant and accomplished letter-writer and dilettante, 
Horace Walpole, was roaming in the City and " passed 
under the new heads on Temple Bar, where people 
make a trade of letting spy-glasses at a halfpenny a 
look." 



346 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYI. 

It was in April, 1773, as recorded by Boswell, that 
Dr. Jolinson, dining at Beauclerk's with Lord Charle- 
mont, Sir Joshua Keynolds, and other members of the 
hterary club held in Gerrard Street, Soho, said, " I 
remember once being with Goldsmith in Westminster 
Abbey. While he surveyed the Poets' Corner, I said 
to him, 'Forsitan et nostrum nomen Tniscehitur istis.'* 
When we got to Temple Bar he stopped me, pointed 
to the heads upon it, and slily whispered me, 
"Forsitan et nostrum noTYien miscebitur ISTIS.' " 

This was excellent — for both Johnson and Gold- 
smith were pretty strong Tories ; in fact, Johnson was 
not far from being a Jacobite, until his interview with 
George III. and his Government pension for the dic- 
tionary, as well as his riper age and experience, con- 
siderably mitigated his political views. 

The heads and limbs on Temple Bar hardened 
and blackened in the air and smoke till they became 
like stone excrescences of the structure, and at last 
nodded off from the spikes or were blown down by 
some high wind. The last to remain were those of 
Townley and Fletcher, and the last remaining of these 
two fell in 1772. 

In 1790 Alderman Pickett, who built Pickett Place, 
on the western side of the Bar, near Butcher Row, and 
other tenements demolished for the improvements 
made before the erection of the present Law Courts, ad- 
vocated the removal of Temple Bar ; but it remained 
for nearly a century before it was finally condemned, 
after repeated and often violent discussion in the 

* " It may be that our name shall mix with theirs." 



XTI] AUBREY IN FLEET STREET. 347 

Common Council ; and middle-aged people still seem 
to miss the queer old arched gateway, and even the 
barber's shop which once stood huddled up to the 
passage-way of the Bar on the northern side, and was 
provided with doors by which customers might pass 
through, either on the east or west, and so find them- 
selves, before or after being shaved, either in the shire 
or the City. 

Among the constant haunters of the Highway of 
Letters for nearly half a century was Aubrey, the 
famous gossiping chronicler, who spent much of his 
time in Fleet Street collecting anecdotes, which are 
frequently so fiill of errors, or mere assumptions, that 
little reliance can be placed on them, though refer- 
ences and quotations, even from the least veracious, 
are often to be found in books professing to be 
authoritative. Aubrey was born in 1625, the year of 
the accession of Charles L, and lived till 1697, when 
William III. reigned alone after the death of Mary. 

Sometimes he wandered in the country, where he 
visited friends and relations, and enjoyed what he 
called his " diet and sweet otiums ; " but usually he 
sought " a happy delitescency " in town, sauntering in 
Fleet Street, lounging in the coffee-houses, attending 
meetings of the Royal Society. What a world of 
gossip was his ! — born not long after Shakespeare's 
death, almost in touch with Ben Jonson, interviewing 
Izaak Walton, consorting with Evelyn, and visiting 
Will's coffee-house, and talking to Dryden about 
Milton, full of superstitious fancies of astrology, 
omens, tokens, and apparitions, which made him seek 



348 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYI. 

Lilly and Yincent Wing. One of his sentences is 
wortli quoting, in relation to the increase of books and 
printing : — " Before printing, old wives' tales were 
ingenious ; and since printing came in fashion, till a 
little before the civil war, the ordinary sort of people 
were not taught to read. Now-a-days books are 
common, and most of the poor people understand 
letters ; and the many good books and variety of 
turns of affairs have put all the old fables out of 
doors. And the divine art of printing and gunpowder 
have frighted away Robin Goodfellow and the 
fairies." 

Aubrey's " Lives of Eminent Men " was written at 
the request of Anthony a Wood, the Oxford antiquary, 
and consisted first of semi-detached notes, or 
"minutes," which Wood had to put in order. The 
book was not printed till 1813, from the Ashmolean 
MSS. ; but they had been frequently consulted by 
biographers, like Marlowe, who made considerable 
use of them. Like most gossipmongers' stories, 
Aubrey's particulars of the habits and origin of 
eminent men are too often on the malicious side of 
exaggeration, and almost as often appear to be mere 
idle inventions. 

It does not appear tbat Aubrey had much to do 
with Childs' bank, though he must have seen the 
room over the gateway of the new Temple Bar, which 
the eminent bankers then or afterwards rented as a 
kind of muniment room, where they stored old 
account books, diaries, letters, and memorials, which 
told the financial history of the firm and contained 



XYI.] TITUS OATES AND THE PILLORY. 349 

strange records of the private pecuniary affairs of 
royal and noble families. 

Dry den had at least one transaction with the Fleet 
Street bankers at the Marygold, for with them he 
deposited £50, to be paid for the discovery of the 
ruffians employed by the profligate Lord Rochester to 
inflict on him a sound cudgelling, in revenge for some 
lines in an essay, or " satire," said to have been written 
by the poet in conjunction with Lord Mulgrave. Can 
we not imagine the famous Poet Laureate, dramatist, 
satirist, the dictator of the wits and men of letters at 
Will's Coffee-house, passing under the newly built 
archway, and calling here and there at the booksellers' 
in the highway of Fleet Street ? A short, plump man, 
with a round, fresh-coloured, dimpled face, and a 
bright eye, but somewhat " down-looking " — that is 
the portrait Pope gave of him in his later days — not 
the kind of man to do much to defend himself against 
the cudgels of scoundrels hired to assault him, but a 
tough opponent with the pen, with which he could 
deal sledge-hammer strokes, or fine-drawn blows that 
would fetch blood. 

He, too, like his friends Pepys and Evelyn, wrote 
of the plague and the fire ; and Dryden probably saw 
Titus Gates, the instigator of the perjuries which 
led to the murderous execution of so many innocent 
persons, partly expiate his misdeeds by the dreadful 
punishment to which he was sentenced by the no less 
hardened villain, Judge Jeffreys, in the succeeding 
reign — part of the punishment being that he should 
periodically stand in the pillory here by the Temple. 



350 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYI. 

It was Evelyn's pen which wrote the graphic 
account, with which we are famihar, of the scene at 
Whitehall, on the Sunday evening before the death of 
Charles II., and of the death-bed scene itself. 

Much of the literature of that time, and the pub- 
lications in Fleet Street, consisted in sathes, pas- 
quinades, plays, and pamphlets, and there was con- 
siderable licence, even in abuse and ridicule of the 
Court, especially when, as was often the case, the 
satirist exposed the foibles of persons in whom the 
King had shrewdly noticed pecuharities which pro- 
voked his scoffino' Avit, or desims to which he was 
opposed. Much was overlooked, so long as it did not 
smell of treason, though attempts had more than once 
been made to suppress coffee-houses, for political 
reasons. 

Soon after the Restoration an Act had been 
passed forbidding the publication of unhcensed books, 
and, as we have noted, there were practically no news- 
papers except the London Gazette, the publication of 
news letters not including reports of proceedings of 
Parliament, political speeches, or much information 
relating to the movements of the Government. The 
art of printing in England was falling into a degraded 
condition, and though the publication of books in- 
creased and the Highway of Letters retained its 
characteristics, there was comparatively Httle demand 
for literature of the higher kind ; and in a licentious 
Court, the depravity of which has seldom been sur- 
passed, there was as little taste for the hghter elegant 
writings of a previous age. This may be attributed to 



/ 



XTLl GBEAT PHEACHEES. 351 

the declension of learning among the majority of 
ladies of the higher class, and a general want of 
female education, which left those of the middle class 
too iofnorant to have even a deshe to read. Of the 
scenes and people at the Court we may read more 
than enough in the pages of Grammont, of Pep3's, 
and of the gi-aver and more affectedly shocked Evelyn. 

In Macaiilay's History we read of the abuses 
and corruption of the officers of the Government, the 
absence of material and national progress, the condition 
of the coimty gentry and of the inferior clergy, the 
restricted area of the metropolis, when Islington, 
Chelsea, and Maiylebone were villages or rural 
districts, and the only bridge across the Thames in 
London, •'•' a single line of irregular arches, overhim.g 
by piles of mean and crazy houses, and furnished, after 
a fashion worthy of the naked barbarians of Dahomey, 
with scores of mouldering heads, impeded the naviga- 
tion of the river." 

This was in 16S5, and yet the world of letters in 
London, as it was represented by Fleet Street and its 
neighbourhood in the City, was distinguished by 
eminent representatives, especially among the London 
clerg}'. Sherlock preached at the Temple, Tillotson 
at Lincohi's Inn, 'Wake and Jeremy CoUier at Gray's 
Inn, Burnet at the Rolls Chapel in Chancery Lane, 
Stillingfleet at St. Paul's, Fowler at St. Giles', 
Cripplegate, and Beveridge at St. Peter's, Cornhill. 
To the wi'itings of these men Dryden owned that he 
was chiefly indebted for his style and the force and 
character of much of his best work — that which was 



352 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYI 

still quoted and for which he was sought after and 
admired Avhen the youth who was to succeed him at 
Will's Coffee-house sent an ode (the first which 
he had pubhshed) from Magdalen College, Oxford, 
inscribed, " To Mr. Dry den, by Mr. Jo. Addison," and 
dated June 2nd, 1693. 




OENAMENT FEOM BUENET'S *'HIST0EY OF HIS OWN THEE " (1724). 



PUBLISHEB's mark foe title-page of second part of "ROBINSON 
CRUSOE," 1719. 



CHAPTER XVIL 

THE "COFFEE-HOUSES." 

Daniel Defoe — His Ups and Downs — Jonathan Swift — Gay's " Trivia " 
— Dunton the Publisher — Jacob Tonson — Bernard Lintot — The 
Court at Kensington — Will's Coffee-house— Steele and Addison — 
Button's Coffee-house — Pope and Voltaire — A Picturesque Age — 
Nando' s Coffee-house — A Scurrilous Publisher — The Kit-Kat 
Club — Francis Atterbury and Joseph Butler. 

The chief representative of the world of letters 
in Fleet Street in the time of James II. was the 
famous Daniel Defoe, and he may be said to have 
touched almost every point in the circumference 
of literature of which that highway was the centre. 
He is remembered as a political essayist and pamph- 
leteer, for he wrote hundreds of these publications, 
and suffered for his sturdy honesty in defending the 
principles of civil and religious Hberty ; but his 
fame as a graphic descriptive writer has been more 
enduring, while as an original story-teller or novelist 



354 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XVII. 

of concentrated power, lie still holds a recognised 
place in the literature of the country. The power 
is none the less striking because it was held in 
reserve, under the control of his amazing faculty 
of invention, which, by its mastery of details, gave 
an air of probability, and even of fact, to works 
of imagination. Of these " Robinson Crusoe " is but 
one among many, though it is tJte one which has 
retained its popularity for nearly two centuries, and 
seems likely to maintain it still, though it has been 
long regarded rather as a book for boys than for 
adult readers, for whom it was first published, and 
who found delight in its religious reflections, as well 
as in its vivid descriptions, and in its romantic and 
apparently veracious narrative. 

Daniel Defoe, the son of James Foe, a prosperous 
dissenting butcher in Cripplegate, was sent to a good 
school, kept by Charles Morton, a well-known scholar, 
and afterwards began his career as an agent in the 
hosiery trade, in Freeman's Court, Cornhill. But his 
footsteps were drawn towards Fleet Street, even in 
those early days, as is shown by his tract, " Presbytery 
Rough Drawn," published in 1683, before the death 
of Charles II. 

On the accession of James, young Foe was on the 
side of those citizens who supported Monmouth, 
whom he followed to Sedgemoor. After the defeat 
there, he escaped to the Continent, visited Spain and 
Portugal, and came back with a " De " before his 
name, so that the author of three other pamphlets, in 
1687, in the reign of James, was Daniel "De" Foe. 



XYII.] DEFOE liSf THE PILLOBY. ' 355 

Though, when AVilliam III. came to the throne, 
Defoe was able to write without being persecuted, 
and advocated many projects the advantages of Avhich 
have only been fully recognised in later days, he 
had to retire to Bristol to avoid the proceedings of a 
creditor, who, with others to whom he owed money, 
was paid out of the earnings of the indefatigable 
writer. He then returned to London, and was em- 
ployed for live years, till 1699, as accountant to the 
Commissioners of the Glass Duty. 

The accession of Anne, and the iDersecution of 
dissenters, reduced him to poverty, but did not daunt 
him. So subtle was the satu-e of " The Shortest Way 
with Dissenters,' that at first several of the more vio- 
lent Tory Churchmen professed the utmost delight 
with it ; while certain leading dissenters denounced it 
with unbated breath. "\Mien it was discovered that 
the essay was a keen satire written by a dissenter, 
the tables were turned, literally " with a vengeance," 
and the author again appeared in Fleet Street, but 
was taken thither from Xewgate that he might be 
placed m the pillory, after having already been 
similarly exposed at the Royal Exchange and the 
Conduit in Cheapside. He was also fined 200 marks, 
and was sentenced to remain in prison till he found 
sureties for his good behaviour for seven years. 

Harley, becommg Minister, induced the Queen 
to remit the fine and shorten the punishment, and 
subsequently Defoe was employed to go to Scotland 
to promote the Union ; but he returned, not only to 
London, but to his former independent support of 
X 2 



356 • THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYII. 

principles wliicli did not suit a Tory Government, 
and was again prosecuted and imprisoned. After 
writing a vindication of himself, lie was compelled, by 
broken liealtb, to retire from the field of political 
controversy, but he continued to write those fictions 
which have done most to place his name in the 
foreh'ont of those who have been identified Avith 
the Highway of Letters. The story which made his 
lasting fame Dr. Johnson placed along with "Don 
Quixote " and the " Pilgrim's Progress," the only three 
books which the reader wished were longer. 

The personal appearance of Defoe was well 
known, and he is described, in the proclamation 
which orders his arrest, as a middle-sized, spare man, 
of about forty, with dark complexion, dark-brown 
hair (but wearing a wig), hooked nose, sharp chin, 
grey eyes, and a large mole near his mouth. Rather 
than the printer and the publisher should suffer, he 
surrendered, but his punishment became a sort of 
triumph. The pillory in Fleet Street, like those at 
the Exchange and Cheapside, was hung with gar- 
lands, for it was in July (the rose month) that he was 
brought out. He had written his " Hymn to the 
Pillory," which was printed and distributed. Crowds 
attended him, and drank his health with acclama- 
tions, as they read the lines : — 

" Tell them the men that iDlaced him here 
Arc scandals to the times ; 
Are at a loss to find his guilt, 
And can't commit his crimes." 

Even his opponents, the Tory pamphleteers, were 



XYII.] THE MOHOCKS. 357 

obliged to acknowledge that lie was protected by bis - 
adherents from tbe insults of those who would have 
triumphed in seeing him pelted with garbage, instead 
of beinof adorned with roses. He went back to New- 
gate to prepare his Review, which began on the 19th 
of February, 1704, Avas at first published twice, and 
afterwards three times, a week, and lasted till May, 
1713, a good deal longer than most, if not all, of its 
immediate successors, though they had the caustic 
satire and coarse power of Swift to maintain them. 

Jonathan Swift himself is not to be omitted 
from the associations of Fleet Street, though he 
only appeared there during his visits to London 
from the parsonage house at Laracor, or afterwards 
from the deanery at Dublin. It was Benjamin 
Motte, who succeeded Ben Tooke at the shop at 
Middle Temple Gate, who published " Gulliver's 
Travels," for which he grudgingly paid £200; and 
we repeatedly hear of Dean Swift being in the 
neighbourhood, either dining at the Devil Tavern 
with some of his friends, or grumbling about a 
visit to the top of St. Paul's, and having to pay 
afterwards for a dinner, or speaking of the danger 
of falling into the hands of the " Mohocks," one of 
the gangs of ruffians who thought they proved 
themselves to be " brave boys " and men of fashion 
by sallying forth at night and attacking peaceable 
people, pricking unoffending citizens Avith their 
swords, drenching feeble wayfarers in the gutter, roll- 
ing women along the causeway in tubs, assaulting 
watchmen, and generally insulting and seriously 



358 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTHBS. [XYII. 

maltreating everybody too weak to withstand them. 
Some of these scoundrels would enter taverns or 
coffee-houses, where unarmed, peaceable tradesmen 
sat, and clear the rooms by their violence. These were 
called " Scourers ; " others took different fancy names. 
They frequently paid a visit to the neighbourhood 
of Fleet Street, and to the West End of London, 
near Bury Street, St. James's, where Swift, writing 
to Stella, in September, 1710, said he had the first 
floor, "a dining-room and bed-chamber, at eight 
shillings per w^eek ; plaguey deep, but I spend 
nothing for eating, never go to a tavern, and very 
seldom m a coach; yet, after all, it will be expen- 
sive." He probably contrived to " board " by visiting 
his friends or accepting invitations. It was said 
that Swift, by one of his strong and cynical remarks, 
suggested to Gay his Beggars 02:)era, the drama 
which had its great scene in Newgate, and highway- 
men, malefactors, and their companions for its 
characters, and was the subject of a fine print b}^ 
Hogarth. Swift had said, " What an odd, pretty sort 
of thing a Newgate pastoral would make," and Gay 
at once caught the idea, and, not unaided by Swift's 
advice, produced the opera in the theatre at Lmcoln's 
Inn Fields, under the management of Rich. At 
first the performance was forbidden, but leave w^as 
afterwards granted, and the Beggars 02'>era. was 
the great attraction of the town, ran for the unpre- 
cedented number of sixty-two nights, and, as the joke 
Avent, " made Gay rich, and Rich gay." 

Gay and Swift both wrote satirical poems about 



XYII.] SWIFT AXD BEYDEN. 359 

London. Ga}^, in tlie " Trivia, or art of Walking in 
London," hits off with happ}^ effect the aspect of 
the streets, the broken causeways, the overflowing 
gutters, the noisome condition of Fleet Ditch, the 
bad roads, the methods of robbery, and the various 
dangers and inconveniences to Avhich wayfarers, in 
the Highway of Letters and its tributary streets, 
were then exposed. Swift, in his vigorous and 
unstudied way, also characterises the ditch, and in 
" The City Shower," and elsewhere, leaves his record 
of the locality ; and so too did Pope, in lines that have 
ahead}' been quoted. 

S^nft, who was thirt3'-six years younger than 
DrjTlen, the latter having been born in 1631 and 
dying in 1700, was never really good friends with 
the old poet, and the cause of his animosity was said 
to be that Swfft having sent a poem to the AtJienian 
Mercury, a weekly periodical issued by a notorious 
publisher named Dunton, Dryden, on reading it, said 
to the Dean, " Cousin, you will never be a poet." 
This Swift never forgave so entirely as to treat 
DrjTlen with cordial fiiendship. 

Dunton the publisher, an erratic individual, who 
repeatedly left his business to travel abroad and in 
America, left a strange autobiography, setting forth 
his " life and errors " ; he died in 1735, in poverty, 
at the age of seventy-six. Pope had included him m 
the '•' Dunciad " as an abusive scribbler. 

Dr^'den's first publisher, Henr}^ Heringman, at 
the Blue Anchor, in the Lower AValk of the Xew 
Exchange — a kind of bazaar built by James I. — 



360 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYII. 

having retired from business, the poet accepted the 
offers of Jacob Tonson, a chimsy, ill-favoured young 
man, who was looking after the main chance and 
striving to monopolise the publication of the works 
of some of the leading men of letters. 

Tonson was not altogether illiberal in his pay- 
ments, but he was not distinguished for dehcacy and 
refinement, and used to harass Dryden by applying 
constantly for " copy," or manuscript for the printer. 
This has always been a source of discord between 
authors and some publishers, who regard the pro- 
ductions of the writer's thought and his facility or 
temporary difficulty of composition as of no account, 
but demand a book as they would order a coat or a 
pair of trousers from a tailor, in a manner at once 
peremptory and uncompromisingly mechanical. 

Dryden, who was not easily ruffled, became at last 
so sensitive to the bullying iteration of Tonson, that 
on one occasion, when a friend had called on him, 
and a knock came at the door, he begged the visitor 

not to go, for 
that was Tonson, 
who, if he found 
him alone, would 
insult and irri- 
tate him beyond 
endurance. As 
the publisher 
also often paid 
in clipped silver 

ORNAMENT FROM "THE FUETHEE ADVENTTJEES OF -. . nA' ^ . 

EOBiNsoN CRUSOE," 1719. aud couis ot light 




XYII.] JACOB TONSON AND LINTOT. 361 

weight, tlie bullying manner Avas adding insult to 
injury, and at length Dryden dipped his pen in the 
gall of which he always kept a stock for special 
occasions, and drew 
Avith vivid force the 
portrait of the un- 
conscionable book- 
seller, Avho came 

*' With, leering looks, hell- 
faced and speckled fair, 

With two left legs and 
Judas-coloured hair, 

And frowzy pores that 
taint the amhient air." 

Jacob didn't AA^ant 
any more of that, 
and became more 
civil. 

Tonson's first shop AA^as the Judge's Head, within 
tAvo or three doors of Fleet Street, in Chancery Lane, 
and about 1697 he moved to a shop under the gate of 
Gray's Inn. He then took one in the Strand, over 
against Catherine Street, Avith the sign of the Shake- 
speare's Head. 

The most successful publisher of that time was 
probably Bernard Lintot, Avhose shop Avas at No. 16, 
Fleet Street, betAveen the tAvo Temple gates. He 
paid Pope above £5,000 for his Homer, so that dis- 
parities betAA^een payments to authors Avere as marked 
in those days as they have been since. The shop 
occupied by Lintot Avas previously kept by Robinson 




" LEMTJEL GTJLLIVEE. 

(From the first edition^ 1726.) 



362 TBE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYII. 

the bookseller, and it was there that Pope met AVar- 
burton and commenced the close friendship Avhich 
lasted for so many years. 

It should be remembered that after the accession 
of William III. fewer jDersons distinguished in arts 
and letters resided in or near Fleet Street. The 
Court was at Kensington, and the tendency had 
been to move westward towards Soho, Leicester 
Fields, and Piccadilly ; but Fleet Street was still the 
Highway of Letters, even though printers, book- 
sellers, and pubhshers were to be found beyond 
Temple Bar, and northward in Holboni, Cripplegate, 
and Clerkenwell. At a later date, when Anne 
was on the throne, Kensington Gardens became 
a fashionable resort, and so they continued- after the 
ferment and turmoil of a threatened return of 
the Stuarts was ended, and the prompt action of 
the Whigs had placed George of Brunswick on the 
throne, to be succeeded by George the Second. It 
was m the latter reign, and under the influence of 
Caroline of Anspach, that the gardens at Kensington 
were in their glory, and the company to be seen there, 
on special occasions, included most of " the* wits," 
nearly all the beaux, and the majority of the beau- 
ties in the metropohs. 

Steele, who, after the accession of George I., was 
made Master of the Horse at Hampton Court, and 
received the honour of knighthood, besides being- 
director of the Company of Comedians ; and Swift, 
with his truculent Irish face, and clad in clerical 
wig and cassock, may be supposed to have mingled 



XYII] DRYDEN— ADDISON—WILL'S, 363 

with the company, Avhile Pope may have made an 
occasional visit to receive the notice which his 
poetical reputation ensured for him, in spite of his 
small stature and deformed figure; but they were 
doubtless more familiar frequenters of the Highway 
of Letters, where Addison's regular-featured, self- 
complacent face, the jovial short visage and beaming 
eyes of Sir Richard, and the crooked figure of Pope 
were to be seen at the booksellers', or at the taverns 
and coffee-houses. 

At Will's coffee-house, in Bow Street, Covent 
Garden, Addison succeeded Dryden as the acknoAV- 
ledged leader of the wits of his time ; but Addison was 
probably less vivid than Drjden, and his style, as we 
may see, though dignified and pure, is, so to speak, 
lacking in colour, albeit in the "Spectator" he displays 
a charming humour and a sprightliness which, though 
inferior to the hearty, genial vivacity of Steele, 
reveals a delightful faculty of depicting character 
and introducing fictitious personages who become 
real to the reader, and are to this day s^^oken of, 
and their supposed opinions quoted, as though they 
had been living acquaintances of the " Spectator." 

" Will's," or William Unwin's, coffee-house, of 
which we have had to speak before, was at the 
west corner of Russell Street, in Bow Street, Covent 
Garden. Bow Street was then as fashionable a resort 
as Bond Street afterwards became, and Will's coffee- 
house was, to all intents and purposes, a tavern, though 
the lower part was let to a woollen draper. It was not 
uncommon in those days for only the upper storeys 



364 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYII. 

of a building to be occupied as a tavern. There was 
one in Chancery Lane, where Izaak Walton (it has 
been said) for some time rented the shop beneath. 
The wits assembled in the large room on the first floor 
at Will's, where they sat at small tables disposed about 
the room. Dryden's chair was in the corner near the 
fire, and in summer was taken into the balcony of the 
window, where aspirants to literary or fashionable 
fame were introduced to him and felt honoured by 
being allowed to take a pinch of snuff from his snuff- 
box. Tobacco was smoked pretty freely in the club- 
room, as at most other places of assembly, and wine, 
punch, and ale were consumed, as well as tea and coffee. 
Here the critics met to discuss the merits or 
demerits of a new play, and the authors, including 
Dryden (" Mr. Bays," as he was called in one of the 
skits of the time), went to listen to them. A private 
room could be engaged for conversation over a dish 
of tea, for the crowd in the larger rooms was often 
considerable ; many of those who composed it 
attending that they might say they had been there. 
Tom Brown, in his " Laconics," says : — " A wit and 
a beau set up Avith little or no expense. A pair of 
red stockings and a sword-knot sets up one, and 
peeping once a day in at Will's, and two or 
three second-hand sayings, the other." "The Lon- 
don Spy " (by Ned Ward) speaks of adjourning to 
the wits' coffee-house, going up-stairs and finding 
much company but little talk ; shufiling through a 
moving crowd of philosophical mutes to the other end 
of the room, where three or four wits of the upper 



XYIL] VOTE AT JVILVS. 365 

class were rendeTouz'd at a table, and were disturbing 
tlie ashes of tlie old poets by perTerting tbeii' sense. 
At another table were seated a parcel of young, raw, 
second-rate beans and wits,, who were conceited if 
tliey bad but the honour to dip a tinger and thumb 
into Mr. Dryden's snuff-box.'"' Defoe, in his " Journey 
thi'ough England;'' speaks of AVrlbs coffee-house, where 
there was pla}-ing at picket and the best of conversa- 
tion till midnight, and where blue and green ribbons 
and stars sat familiarl}' and talked ^dth the same 
freedom as if they had left their quahties and degTees 
of distance at home. This jwas of course before the 
degeneration mentioned by Xed Arard. 

Adchson had vaitten words of praise and encom-- 
agement of young Pope, and the little poet seems 
to have been introduced at A"\^ill"s by a friend of 
Swift. He has left some memoranda relating to 
Addison, who, he says, •'•'passed each clay alike and 
much m the manner that Dry den did."'" Dryden 
employed his mornings in "^Titing, dined en faraiUe, 
and then went to Will's, only he came home early o' 
nights. Pope, neither by taste nor constitution, could 
bear nu.ich of this coffee-house hfe. The drinking and 
the late hours were too much for him, and, truth to 
tell, the placid, composed, highly moral Addison was 
about the equal of the joyial, impulsive, genial Steele, 
in the matter of potations. The ex-guardsman, 
di'amatist, poet, essayist, probably had the character 
of a toper because of this joviality. He spoke of drink- 
ing whether he drank or not. Was it not fi'om the 
Trumpet, in Shire Lane, that he sent word to his wife, 



366 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XVII. 

whom lie dearly loved, tliat he Avould be Avith her "in a 
bottle and a half " ? Addison, probably, seldom talked 
much about it, but drank the more. Steele was a 
careless, good-humoured, tender-hearted, open-handed 
man — and a good man, too — always on the side of 
morality and religion. Addison was intellectually 
great, but in many respects socially small, reserved, 
and often disingenuous and self-seeking. Perhaps 
the contact Avith Court and Government had some- 
Avhat damaged him. It seemed that it could not 
damage Steele, Avho cared little for political honours, 
though, in his Avay, he Avas a hearty politician. 

Both, hoAvcA^er, Avere good men and close friends. 
They had been at school together at the Charterhouse, 
and Avere Avithin a feAv months of the same age. It 
is to be regretted that almost at the end of their liter- 
ary career they should have quarrelled about some 
political question. 

The references to AVill's in the " Tatler " and the 
" Spectator " are numerous, but it is to be noted that 
though some of the poetical contributions Avere dated 
from Will's coffee -house, it A\^as at the Trumpet, in 
Shire Lane, at the upper end, that " the Tatler " met 
his club, and that " Isaac Bickerstaff," the fictional 
representative of Steele, lived. The more learned or 
scientific papers in the " Tatler " Avere dated from the 
Grecian coffee-house, in DcA^ereux Court, Strand, 
Avhich may be said to have been contiguous to the 
Temple, and afterAvards became the Grecian Chambers. 
The Grecian AA^as a great resort of learned men, and 
we read of Dr. Sloane, the secretary of the Royal 



XYIL] THE '• TATLER " AXD THE '^SFECTATOB:' 367 

Society, there, and of Thoresby meeting Sir Isaac 
Newton, with, professors from Oxford, and others, at 
the Grecian, after conference of the Society in 1712. 
In the first number of the '^ Tatler" it was recorded that 
Wilis had ahered very much since the time that 
Dryden frequented it, and that instead of songs, 
epigTams, and satires, in the hands of the visitors 
there was a pack of cards ; mstead of cavils about the 
turn of the expression, the elegance of the style, and 
the like, the learned had disputes only about the 
game. 

It was in 1710 — the year in which the first 
number of the '•' Spectator " appeared — that Addison 
transferred himseh* to a coifee-house on the south 
side of Kussell Street, opposite Will's, and kept by a 
servant of the Countess of Warwick. This man, 
whose name was Button, opened the house in 1712, 
and under the attractive patronage of the author 
of Cato, Button's coffee-house soon became a 
famous resort for the ^nts, and especially the 
Hterary WTiigs, as Will's had been, and to some 
extent continued to be, for the Tories. It 
was said that when Addison was vexed by the 
countess, whom he was then courting, he would 
withdraw the customers fi'om her former servant, 
Button ; but this was probably a baseless Tory scandal 
- — and scandal was a large element at the cotfee- 
houses in those days. Addison's chief companions at 
Button's, before he married in 1716, were Steele, 
Budgell, Philips, Daventry, and Colonel Brett, with one 
of whom he would breakfast at his lodgings in St. 



568 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYII. 

James's Place, dine at some tayern in Fleet Street, or 
elsewhere, then go to Button's, and stay for five or six 
hours, and perhaps go to some other tavern for supper ; 
or he would dine at Button's, and stay far into the 
night. Pope could not stand this for above a year. He 
found it hurt his health, and so he left it. Perhaps 
he objected to the AVhiggery, as he professed to be of 
no politics ; but it is scarcely likely that a man of his 
physique could bear such a life, and he probably had 
discarded Button's before Ambrose Philips hung 
up a rod there, with the threat of castigating the 
satirical little poet if he caught him. 

This story may have been another scandal, or may 
have originated in a threat, but it can scarcely be 
doubted that Pope was a wasp, as is shoT\Ti by the 
manner in Avhich he contrives to bring everybody into 
the " Dunciad," whether they had personally offended 
him or not. CoUey Gibber, who was, perhaps, most 
hardly dealt with by Pope's persistent attacks on him 
— and, as he said, for no reason of which he was aAvare 
— may have given the true cause of his abandoning 
the society. " When you used to pass your hours at 
Button's you were, even there, remarkable for your 
satirical itch of provocation ; scarce was there a 
gentleman of any pretension to wit whom your un- 
guarded temper had not fallen upon in some biting 
epigram, among which you once caught a pastoral 
Tartar, whose resentment, that your pimishment 
might be proportioned to the smart of your poetry, 
had stuck up a birchen rod in the room, to be ready 
whenever you might come within reach of it ; and 



X^T:I.' lady MARY WOIiTLEY WjXTAGU. 



369 



at this rate yoti wiit and rallied, and wi'it on, till you 
rhymed yourself* quite out of the coffee-house. '''" 

This was in 1742. But, on the other side, Gay had 
TTi-itten to Pope, in 1715, ■■J am confinned that at 




jACos IO^•so^-. 



Button's yotu* character is made very fi-ee with, as to 
morals, etc.'"' It is certain that at one time Po^oe, in 
spite of the personal disadvantage which led Dennis, 
the critic, to call him a •' hunchbacked toad,"' had the 
reputation of seeking intrigues, and his letters to Lady 
Mary Wortley Montagu and others are full of arti- 
ficial expressions of the kind which went for gaUantry 
and devotion : but there is reason to beheve that they 

Y 



370 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XVII. 

ivere artificial, and, as a matter of fact, we find the 
great little poet preserving some of them by using 
them afterwards as lines in his poems, for he was as 
penurious in his economy of phrases suitable for 
" copy " as he was of the paper on which he wrote. 

It should not be forgotten that when Yoltaire 
came to England, in 1726, he visited Pope, and dined 
at his table, where the conversation of the lively but 
by no means personally attractive Frenchman (he 
spoke English perfectly) was so exceedingly free that 
the respectable old lady. Pope's mother, left the room. 
She probably held to the more decorous manners and 
staid conversation of the superior class of City trades- 
men, improved by mixing in intellectual society m her 
later days ; for Pope's father was a silk mercer in 
Lombard Street, and a man of some consideration 
among his neighbours. 

It may be that Pope introduced Yoltaire to Fleet 
Street and the Middle Temple, of which Congreve 
was a member, though he lived in Surrey Street, 
where Voltaire, calling on him and referring to his 
works, was disgusted because the brilliant but arti- 
ficial dramatist spoke of them as " trifles that were be- 
neath him," and hinted that his visitor should seek 
his acquaintance " upon no other foot " (says Vol- 
taire) " than upon that of a gentleman who led a life 
of plainness and simplicity. I answered that had he 
been so unfortunate as to be a mere gentleman, I should 
never have come to see him." An appropriate rebuke 
from the distinguished Frenchman, who had come to 
England to publish his " Henriade " by subscription. 



XYII.] BEAUX, WITS, AND BEAUTIES. 371 

Yoltaii'e staj^ed in England for three years, and 
doubtless became acquainted with the fashionable 
society at Kensington Gardens, as well as with the 
" stationers " (booksellers' and publishers' shops) and 
the coffee-houses and taverns of Fleet Street, for 
Queen Caroline was helping to raise subscriptions for 
his book, and in his letters on Eno-land he wrote some 
polished verses in English upon Miss Lepell, one of 
the '' beauties " who were made famous by the wits 
and poets of that time. 

By-the-bye, in our imaginings of the aspect of Fleet 
Street during the periods of which we have been speak- 
ing, we should not leave out of consideration the gay 
colours, the variety, and sometimes the picturesque 
fashion of the costumes to be seen there — the broad- 
leafed hat and feathers, the lace ruffles, the silk or 
velvet coats and breeches, the bejewelled swords and 
ribbon-bowed sleeves of the gentlemen ; the negligent 
drapery and brilliant-hued gowns and sacks, the 
hoods and feathered hats, the poAvder and patches 
of the ladies, who often wore " vizards," or half-masks, 
when they went for a jaunt, or sat at the theatre, 
where their blushes, perhaps, needed to be concealed, 
as the plays of Etherege and Wycherley, not to name 
lesser dramatists, were often marked by grossly in- 
decent references, which were, unfortunately, not 
much duninished when actresses came upon the stage 
and superseded the young men who had previously 
played the characters of women. There must have 
been a wonderful movement of colour and varied 
fashion when the sedan chairs, or the glass coaches, 
Y 2 



372 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XVIL 

lingered till they could pass under Temple Bar, and 
gallant gentlemen coming from the booksellers' 
or the coffee-houses stood bowing to their acquaint- 
ances. Even down to the day when Goldsmith Avore 
the peach-bloom-coloured coat made by Mr. Filby, 
the tailor, in Salisbury Court, and Beauclerk and 
Langton paused at the Middle Temple gate to 
exchange nods with acquaintances, as they went to 
call on Dr. Samuel Johnson, and the ladies wore vast 
hoops and towering head-dresses, the scene must 
have been one which we can scarcely realise, any 
more than we can altogether realise the strange 
shows that were so frequently to be seen between 
Temple Bar and Fleet Ditch, during the time 
between the accession of Queen Anne and that of 
George III. 

They were vulgar shows for the most part, and 
not such as would attract much attention, even at a 
country fair, nowadaj^s — monstrosities, dwarfs, giants 
(one of whom, dying, was buried in St. Dunstan's 
Churchyard), bearded Avomen, performing animals, 
posture masters (v/ho would entirely dislocate their 
limbs for the entertainment of visitors), fire-eaters, 
an elephant, a frowsy dromedary and her J^oung one 
(from Tartary) ; and, among the better sort, a mov- 
ing picture or panorama, a model of Amsterdam, and 
some ingenious but poor mechanical contrivances, 
such as would now be gratuitously displa3^ed in shop 
windows. 

As all the houses where these were exhibited, and 
most of the other buildings, were still distinguished 



XYll.] PINCHBECK. 373 

by painted signs, mostly swinging on ornamental iron 
brackets or stanchions from the house fronts, the 
general aspect was cheerful and picturesque from its 
remarkable irregularity, though the signboards some- 
times Avere so heavy that one would occasionally be 
blown down, or break from its supports, and endanger 
the lives of the wayfarers. As there were no properly 
paved footways, and only a few timber posts to 
guard pedestrians from the wheels of coaches and 
waggons, the mud was cast in showers from the 
gutters upon the unfortunate people v>^ho were not 
on the side to " take the wall," while in wet weather 
the streams from defective spouts or high-pitched 
roofs added to the quagmires which only the wary 
walker could escape. 

Pope, Swift, Gay, and others have left graphic 
pictures of these aspects of the Highway of Letters 
and its neighbourhood, and the "Tatler " and the "Spec- 
tator" present quaint and humorous allusions to them, 
and to the shops and taverns, from that of the in- 
ventor of the amalgamated metals, called after him, 
" Pinchbeck," to Charles Mather's, which is called in 
the "Tatler" " Bubbleboys," the toyman, who, being 
accused by Sir Timothy Shallow of selling him a cane 
" for ten pieces, while Tom Empty had as good a one 
for five," exclaims, " Lord ! Sir Timothy, I am con- 
cerned that you, whom I took to understand canes 
better than anybody in town, should be so overseen. 
Why, Sir Timothy, yours is a true 'jambee,' and 
Esquire Empty's only a plain ' dragon.' " 

One of the most famous coffee-houses was Nando's, 



374 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYIl. 

at the east corner of Middle Temple Lane, next to 
Lintot's, and here Thurlow, who was called to the Bar 
in 1754, used to resort. It was said that by his 
evident ability in a conversation which took place 
there, he obtained from a stranger a retainer as junior 
counsel in a famous case, which was the beginning of 
the career by which he was afterwards so dis- 
tinguished as Lord Chancellor. 

Peele's Tavern, at the corner of Fetter Lane, was 
on the same spot in 1722, and at a much later date 
included a newspaper room, where the principal news- 
papers were filed — but this was before the daj^s of 
penny daily papers. 

At the Black Boy, in Fleet Street, Arthur Collier pub- 
lished the first edition of " The Peerage," in 1709 ; and 
against St. Dunstan's Church was the Homer's Head, 
where Lawton Gilliver, stationer, did business. Close 
by, and nearly opposite to the Cross Keys (the sign of 
Bernard Lintot, Pope's publisher), was the Dial and 
Bible — also against St. Dunstan's Church — where the 
infamous Edward Curll published scurrilous books 
and pamphlets, some of them containing real or pre- 
tended private correspondence, which, if genuine, had 
been dishonestly obtained. 

It was against Curll, who was the predecessor of 
some others who have gained notoriety by defamation 
and the diffusion of obscene and scandalous stories 
and rej^orts, that Pope directed some of his bitterest 
denunciations, for he had been the victim of this 
dastardly dealer in alleged secret correspondence. 
In 1716 Curll had obtained from some unknown 



XYIL] GUELL. 375 

source several manuscripts entitled "Court Poems/' 
attributed to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and 
published them as having been Avritten by Pope. 
For this Pope had his revenge by publishing an 
account in a satirical pamphlet of the poisoning of 
Curll and his recovery by the administration of a 
" vomit." 

But the rascally pubHsher was incorrigible in his 
liking for slander and base imputation, and contrived,in 
1726, to get hold of some of Pope's letters to his friend 
Cromwell, which were, it is believed, sent to the un- 
scrupulous printer by Mrs. Thomas, Cromwell's mis- 
tress — spoken of as " Corinna " — Avho was for some 
time in prison for debt in the Fleet. Curll, a 
shambling, ill-conditioned, hang-dog-looking fellow, 
did not always go unscathed, and on one occasion, 
visiting Westminster School to make some inquiries 
about one of the masters or some person in authority, 
the boys in the playground caught sight of him, 
and, recognising his ungainly figure, proceeded to 
inflict condign punishment by husthng him, while 
some of them fetched a blanket, in which he was 
tossed till his limbs were half dislocated, when he was 
suffered to escape in a sorry plight. 

Jacob Tonson, notwithstanding his coarse famih- 
arity and brutal bluntness, and though he occasionally 
endeavoured to obtain high-class work for low-class 
pay, and doled out clipped and battered coins to men 
who submitted to his extortions, was of a different 
order, and attained sufficient honour and distinc- 
tion to rank as the associate, as well as the 



376 TEE BIGEWAY OF LETTERS. [XYII. 

publisher, of men far above bim in education and 
social position. He was bold enougb to become 
the representative of publishing enterprise in a time 
when the business of the stationer and printer was 
emerging from some former disabilities, and when a 
reading public had been formed and was growing 
with remarkable rapidity. 

Probably the occasion on which Tonson badgered 
Dryden beyond endurance was when the poet, who 
was then a Tory and a Jacobite, refused to dedicate 
his translation of Yirgil to William III., by whose 
accession he had lost the Laureateship. Tonson, 
who was a violent Whig, was, therefore, reduced to 
the alternative of insinuating a compliment to his 
Majesty by causing the engraver to lengthen the 
nose of ^Eneas in the illustrations, that it might 
bear some resemblance to the most prominent fea- 
ture of the royal countenance. 

His association as a publisher with eminent Whig 
writers, like Steele, Addison, and other habitues 
of the Highway of Letters, enabled Tonson, who 
had accumulated a considerable fortune, to become 
the secretary of the famous Kit-Kat Club, which 
was held in Shire Lane, at a pastrycook's shop, 
or a tavern, kept by one Christopher Katt, noted, 
it is said, for the composition of savoury mutton 
pies. The conjunction of these dainties with the 
name of their vendor is somewhat suggestive to a 
more modern imagination, and some chronicler has 
endeavoured to pile up the agony by placing on 
record that the sign of the tavern was the " Cat and 



XYIl.] 



"THE KiT-KAT. 



377 



Fiddle " — a corruption, be it remembered, of " Caton 
Fidele," " the faithful Caton," referring to the loyal 
governor of Calais; but this additional association 
with the name of the 
club is rather beyond 
probability. 

The club or society 
consisted, on an average, 
of thirty-nine distin- 
guished noblemen and 
gentlemen zealously at- 
tached to the Protestant 
succession of the House 
of Hanover. The famous 
mutton pies always 
formed part of the fare. 
The walls of the club- 
room were hung with 
portraits of the mem- 
bers, painted by Sir 
Godfrey Kneller, who 
was himself a member, and who, it has been said, paijited 
them at the wheedling instigation of Tonson, who knew 
how to use coarse flattery to one so greedy of it as 
the fashionable artist. These portraits were of that 
three-quarter size which thereafter took the name of 
'' Kit-Kat," and they appear to have been so designed 
to suit the dimensions of a room which Tonson built 
for the reception of the club at his house at Barn 
Elms, where the summer meetings were ultimately 
held instead of at " The Flask," on Hampstead Heath. 




FEONTISPIECE TO "THE RAPE OF THE 

LOCK." {From the edition of 1714.) 



378 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYll. 

Foremost among the literary members were 
Steele and Addison. The Duke of Marlborough, 
the Earl of Dorset (a poet), Lord Stanhope, the 
Earl of Essex, Lord Halifax, Sir Kobert Walpole, 
Garth (the poet-physician), Vanbrugh (the writer of 
comedies). Main waring, Pulteney, and Pierpoint, Duke 
of Kingston, were members. Every year the club 
observed the custom of electing some " beauty " 
of society as a " toast," and the gallant gentlemen 
engraved couplets or verses on their wine-glasses 
in her honour. The Duke of Kingston one evening 
proposed his little daughter, Lady Mary, and sent 
a chaise to fetch the beautiful child, who was 
toasted and elected by acclamation, and petted 
enough to turn her head. When the little lady 
grew to be a famous woman, and became Lady 
Mary Wortley Montagu, she used to refer with 
effusive delight to the recollection of that wonderful 
evening at the Kit-Kat Club. 

In the later days of the society the infamous 
scoundrel and duellist, Lord Mohun, who murdered 
Mountford the actor, and killed and was killed by 
the Duke of Hamilton in a duel in Hyde Park, 
became a member. Old Jacob Tonson considered 
that this was of sinister augury, especially when, in a 
fit of temper, aggravated by drink, Mohun broke 
the gilded emblem from the top of a chair. " The 
man who would do that," said the blunt old book- 
seller to a friend, " would cut a man's throat." Not 
long afterwards the club faded out. The prepara- 
tions for the last ceremony of burning the Pope at 



XYIl.] REYNOLDS DESCRIBES POPE. 379 

Temple Bar were forbidden because it was asserted 
that they had been instigated by the members of 
the Club. 

Pope, who wrote some account of the Kit-Kat in 
a letter to Spence, became, as we have seen, a great 
friend of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and she 
good-humouredly tolerated the assumed gallantry 
of his letters; but they quarrelled because he could 
not, or would not, refrain from treating her to some 
of his pungent satirical comments. By that time, 
however, he had becoine a person of such distinc- 
tion that he was received even in public places with 
no httle deference. At a still later date we find Sir 
Joshua Reynolds ^mting about his first seeing Pope, 
and the admirable word-picture by which he describes 
him is eminently indicative of the great portrait painter. 

Reynolds was then a young apprentice Avith 
Hudson, the portrait painter, who entrusted him to 
attend a picture sale to make a purchase. AVhile he 
was there he heard the name of Pope whispered by 
the people about him, and presently the visitors in 
the room made way, and Pope himself entered, bowing 
from side to side and shaking hands with several who 
were near enough, among whom was young Reynolds, 
who put out his hand under the arm of the person in 
front of him. He described Pope as " about five feet 
six inches high ; very humpbacked and deformed. 
He wore a black cloak, and, according to the fashion 
of that time, had on a little sword. He had a large 
and very fine eye, and a long handsome nose; his 
mouth had those peculiar marks which are always 



380 THE mas WAT OF LETTERS. fXYII. 

found in the mouths of crooked persons, and the 
muscles which run across the cheek were so strongly 
marked that they seemed hke small cords." 

The description agrees wonderfully with the 
appearance of the bust by Eoubiliac, which became 
the property of the late ^Ir. John Murray. This was 
about 1741, and not long before Pope's death. The 
Kit-Kat Club had been played out, and Button's also 
dechned at the death of Addison in 1719, and the 
retirement of Steele to his country house, where he 
also died in 1729. 

Pope survived them both — living till 1744— and 
Swift lived one year longer, but had become utterly 
broken clown two or three years before, and died 
insane, as he had predicted that he would. AVhen 
pointing to a tree withered at the upper branches, 
he said, " I shall be like that tree ; I shall die from 
the top." 

The brilliant, learned, and eloquent Francis 
Atterbury, who had been chaplain to William and 
Mary, lecturer at St. Bride's, and preacher at Bride- 
well Chapel in the reign of Anne, had become Dean 
of Westminster and Bishop of Rochester, and in 1723 
left the kingdom — banished for hfe for having joined 
a plot to bring in the Pretender. He died in Paris in 
1732. 

The learned Joseph Butler, author of that still 
famous and unrivalled treatise, the "Analogy," had 
been preacher at the Rolls Chapel from 1718 to 
1722, before he was appointed to a country rectory, 
where he remained quietly performing all his duties, 



xvn.i 



BISHOP BUTLEB^WALPOLE. 



581 



and continuing his profound studies, till a mend 
speaking of liim to Caroline, Queen of George IL, 
her Majesty exclaimed, '■ Mj^God ! I thought he had 
been dead." 

"No, madam, but he is buried," was the answer. 




E-s (1717). 



The great talents of the eminent and estimable divine 
had broutrht him fame, but neither fortune nor much 

o 

preferment, till the Queen's patronage, thus bespoken, 
set him in the path which led to the bishopric of 
Durham. 

When Horace Walpole was writing his trivial, 
but amusing and acute, correspondence. Pope 
may be said to have been the last surviving 
link of the society of the Highway of Letters 
which was associated with the club in Shire 
Lane. 



382 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYII. 

A newer school was gathering about Fleet Street, 
St Bride's, and the Temple, and those letters of 
AValpole, and the trifling, episodes mth which he was 
concerned, are of more importance than he ever 
expected they would be, in depicting the superficial 
aspects of the period, its manners, fashions, and 
absurdities. 




PAINTED CEILING OVER THE PIT OF GOODMAN'S FIELDS THEATRE, IN 
■WHICH GARRICK FIRST ACTED IN LONDON, OCT. 19tH, 1741. 



CHAPTER XYIII. 

DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 

Johnson in the Highway of Letters — Dryden, Swinney, and Gibber 
at Will's — Boswell — Pope and Johnson's Poem — The Friends who 
sought Johnson's Company — Johnson's Marriage — Lucy Porter — 
Portrait of Mrs. Johnson by Garrick — The Adelphi— The Literary 
Club — Fanny Burney — Johnson and Garrick — Johnson's Por- 
trait by Eeynolds — Hogarth — Eichardson — Mrs. Thrale —Her 
Anecdotes of Johnson— Her Marriage with Piozzi — Oliver Gold- 
smith in Green Arbour Court and "Wine Office Court — Meet- 
ings at the "Old Cheshire Cheese" — Miss Eeynolds — The 
Ugliest Man — Eeynolds' Fees for Portraits — The "Eetaliation" — 
" The Vicar of Wakefield " — Mr. Nowbery the Publisher — 
Eichardson at Home — Mrs. Barbauld — Sir John Hawkins— John 
Wilkes and the North Briton in Fleet Street — Meeting of Wilkes 
and Johnson — The St. Dunstan's Club. 

Samuel Johnson (it has already been impossible 
to keep that commanding name out of a record of 



384 THE HIGHV/AY OF LETTERS. [XYIII. 

Fleet Street, and of those who have walked and 
wrought therem), Samuel Johnson, when he had 
become Doctor Johnson and the centre of that famous 
circle which has ever since been so closely identified 
with the Highway of Letters, used to say, " When I 
was a young fellow I wanted to write the Life of 
Dryden, and in order to get materials I applied to 
the only two persons then alive who had seen him ; 
these were old Swinney and old Gibber. Swinney's 
information was no more than this — * That at Will's 
Coffee-house Dryden had a particular chair for himself, 
which was set by the fire in winter and was then 
called his winter chair; and that it was carried out for 
him to the balcony in summer and was then called his 
summer chair.' Cibber could tell no more but that 
he remembered him 'a decent old man, arbiter of 
critical disputes at Will's.' " 

This is very suggestive of a wish that other men 
besides Johnson could have had a Boswell — following 
them hke a shadow, marking down every particular 
of their habits and conversation, and yet not only 
tolerated but often encouraged, occasionally praised, 
sometimes even thanked for their company and their 
efforts to ingratiate themselves, without any reward 
but the satisfaction of genuine reverence, and a sense 
of moral and intellectual improvement by listening to 
the conversations of a learned and good man, with an 
extraordinary faculty of delivering an opinion on any 
and every subject. 

It is pleasant to remember that Pope, who still 
was supreme in the poetical world in 1738, when 



XYni.] POPE'S LETTER ABOUT JOHNSO^\ 385 

Johnson was twentj'-nine years old, was eyidently 
struck with the merits of the poem on "London," 
and inquired who was the author. On being in- 
formed that his name was Johnson and that he was 
some obscure man, Pope replied, •'■'He will soon be 
deter re." 

It is possible that the eye of the acute and 
successful poet may have caught the famous 
lines — 

" This mournful truth is eYer\-where confess'd — 
Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed ; " 

which, even in a later day, Johnson would repeat with 
solemn and impressive emphasis. At any rate, Pope 
seems not only to have made further inquiry about 
him, but perhaps to have seen him, though without 
his knowledge, and certainly to have tried to help 
him to obtain an appointment, for Avhich he at that 
time applied, as master of a public school in Shrop- 
shire. The following note was sent by Pope to the 
hiend before referred to (a son of a painter named 
Richardson), along with a copy of Johnson's Imitation 
of Juvenal — 

" This is imitated by one Johnson, who put in for a public school 
in Shropshire, but was disappointed. He has an infirmity of the 
con\nilsive kind, that attacks him sometimes so as to make Him a sad 
spectacle. IsLr. P. from the Merit of This Work, which was all 
the knowledge he had of him, endeavoured to serve him -n-ithout 
his own application ; and wrote to my Ld. Gore, but he did not 
succeed. Mr. Johnson published afterwards another poem in Latin 
with notes, the whole very humerous, call'd the ' Xorfolk 
Prophecy.'— P." 

This note was ^vi'itten on a slip of paper no larger 



386 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYIII. 

than a common message card, for " Paper- sparing 
Pope," as Swift called him, was so thrifty in this 
matter that parts of some of his important works were 
written on the fly-leaves or envelopes of old letters 
and other scraps of paper. 

To speak of Doctor Samuel Johnson is indirectly 
to speak of Fleet Street — the Highway of Letters, of 
which for thirty-eight years he was the resident and 
conspicuous representative, amidst a circle of eminent 
men, Avho, though of strangely various pursuits and 
abilities, have ever since been associated in our 
memory with the clubs and coteries of which 
Johnson Avas the sponsor or the attracting centre. 

Goldsmith, Burke, Reynolds, Garrick, Burney, 
Bennet Langton — the young gentleman from Oxford 
who had come to London to seek an interview with the 
author of the " Rambler," and remained his firm 
friend — the gay and somewhat j^rofligate Beauclerk, 
whom the sage forgave much, because of his 
respect for good principles, his fascinating manners 
and excellent temper; Dr. Hawksworth; Hawkins, 
of whom BosAvell Avas so jealous, and a number of 
others, among whom may be included Hogarth, 
Richardson, and, at a later date, Wilkes, were all im- 
pressed by that imposing personality, the powerful 
practical intellect and the prodigious range of infor- 
mation, which gave the doctor the foremost place 
in any society where his opinions were sought or 
expressed. 

How familiar we seem to be with his companions 
in the Highway of Letters! They have been intro- 



XVIII.] TRE YOUNG MAN FROM LICHFIELD. 387 

duced to us in their habit as they Kved, and we 
know them in their social relations with Johnson, 
through the careful record of the faithful and irre- 
pressible Boswell. To his record what can be added ? 
It is the assiduously chronicled familiar life of the 
man whose footsteps sounded in Fleet Street for 
nearly half a century, and seem to echo there to this day. 
We are acquainted with the aspect and the 
character of Samuel Johnson, even at the tmie 
that he came from Lichfield to London ; we know of 
his early struggles, his precocious childhood; of his 
marriage (in 1734), when he was twenty-seven years 
old, with Mrs. Porter, a widow of forty-eight; of his 
affection for and correspondence with Lucy Porter, 
his step- daughter, long after the death of her mother 
in 1752, Lucy having remained in Lichfield with 
friends of the family, when her mother lived in 
London. We see the huge, loose-limbed, gaunt young 
man, with the strong face, marked and scarred by the 
scrofula from which he had suffered in childhood ; the 
straight, stiff hair ; the nervous disorder which caused 
his strange contortions, starts and gesticulations, and 
was mistaken for paralysis or "St. Vitus' Dance"; 
we laugh at the account he himself gave to Topham 
Beauclerk of " the love marriage on both sides," as he, 
no doubt, truly called it, in spite of the disparity of 
age. We remember the evidences of his deep attach- 
ment and his profound grief at the death of his wife; 
and we are almost angry at the florid, and by no 
means flattering, portrait of her which has been pre- 
served in the pages of Boswell, who says : — 
z 2 



388 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYIIl. 

"... Mrs. Johnson, whom he used to name by the familiar appellation 
of ' Tetty ' or * Tetsey,' which, like ' Betty ' or ' Betsey ' is provincially 
used as a contraction for Elizabeth, her Chiustian name, but which to 
us seems ludicrous, when applied to a woman of her age and appear- 
ance. Mr. Grarrick described her to me as very fat, with a bosom of 
more than ordinary protuberance, with swelled cheeks, of a florid red, 
produced by thick painting, and increased by the liberal use of 
cordials, flaring and fantastic in her dress, and affected both in her 
speech and her general behaviour. I have seen Garrick exhibit her, 
by his exquisite talent of mimicry, so as to excite the heartiest bursts 
of laughter ; but he, probably, as is the case in all such representa- 
tions, considerably aggravated the picture." 

This mimicry on the part of Garrick was probably 
a revival of the ridicule in which schoolboys Avill 
indulge at the expense of their masters, and there 
appears to have been a good deal of it at the 
"Academy" opened by Samuel Johnson at Ediall, 
near Lichfield, though there were but three boys there 
to board and learn Latin and Greek, one of whom was 
David Garrick, who, when Johnson closed his school 
and came to try his fortune in London, was consigned 
to his care, to be placed with the Rev. Mr. Colson. 

Johnson was eight and twenty, and we know he 
took a lodging in a garret at a staymaker's in Exeter 
Street, and dined at the Pine Apple in New Street for 
eightpence, including the penny which he gave the 
waiter, though other guests gave nothing. 

Next we see him going to fetch his wife, perhaps 
with the hope that his tragedy of Irene would be 
accepted ; and we are told of his going with Mr. Peter 
Garrick to the Fountain tavern to read the play, with 
a view to offering it to Mr. Fleetwood, the patentee of 
Drury Lane Theatre ; but the tragedy had no exalted 
patron's name to float it and it was declined, nor was 



XYIII.] THE GARBICKS. 389 

it produced till twelve years afterwards, when David 
himself had become celebrated as the greatest actor of 
the age, and was manager of that theatre, where it 
appeared in 1749. 

Before David Garrick's great success on the stage, 
he and his brother Peter — a sedate and quiet man — 
were engaged in business as wine merchants in 
Durham Yard. It was on this site and that of the 
"new Exchange" which stood there in the time of 
James I., that the brothers Adam afterwards built the 
Adelphi, about 1772. Garrick lived there in No. 5 
the centre house of the terrace, till his death in 1779. 
It would appear that he then had ceased to go to the 
taverns in the neighbourhood of Fleet Street, or the 
Clubs that Avere held in them, for he wrote to the 
brothers Robert and John Adam, on behalf of Becket, 
a bookseller in the Strand, who wanted to remove to 
the house at the corner of Adam Street — " If you can 
make us all happy by suiting all our conveniences we 
shall make this shop, as old Jacob Tonson's was 
formerly, the rendezvous of the first people of Eng- 
land. I have a Httle selfishness in this request — I 
never go to coffee-houses, seldom to taverns, and 
should constantly (if this scheme takes place) be at 
Becket's, at one at noon and six at night." 

The Club in Gerrard Street, Soho, founded by 
Johnson and Reynolds in 1764, still had superior 
attractions. It was first lield at the Turk's Head in 
Greek Street, and was removed to a house with the 
same sign in Gerrard Street. At the death of Garrick 
it was called " The Literary Club," and the last 



390 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYIII. 

member elected in Johnson's lifetime was Dr. Burney, 
the father of Fanny Biirne}^ the authoress of 
" Evelina," with whom the Doctor was so fascinated 
when he first made her acquaintance at the Thrales', 
that he resented Boswell's jealous endeavour to thrust 
himself between them and divert the conversation. 

It was in reference to Garrick's death that John- 
son said it was an event which had " eclipsed the 
gaiety of nations," a rather exaggerated declaration, 
which he afterwards defended when Boswell and 
others spoke of it as an extreme statement. They 
remembered, of course, how frequently the Doctor 
had spoken disparagingly of the actor's art, as a 
claim to high consideration for the actor himself, 
and of the ridicule which he had cast upon some of 
Garrick's verse. But the}^ probably did not quite 
understand the real tenderness which existed between 
the former master and the former pupil, though we 
learn from Boswell that little David would, as it 
were, flutter about the great burly Doctor, pat the 
lappels of his coat, and seem to appropriate him by 
such silent tokens ; while the Doctor would beam 
upon him with those purblind eyes, of which one 
was nearly useless, though he was a singularly close, 
comprehensive, and accurate observer when he was 
not in one of his frequent fits of abstraction. 

It has been well said that Johnson regarded 
Garrick as being, in a sense, his property, and Avould 
say anything he chose of or to him, but would never 
suffer others to disparage him without keenly con- 
tradicting them. The fact was that while Johnson 



XYIII.] CBARAGTEBISTIGS OF JOHNS OX. 391 

admired the actor's <:>Tacefnl and brilliant conversa- 
tion, his wit and repartee, he thought little of his 
literary ability, and did not rank dramatic representa- 
tion, or the simulation of character on the stage, 
amono' the hio'hest attainments. 

Of course Johnson's characteristic emphasis of 
statement must be taken into consideration, but his 
occasional apparent perversity may be explained by 
his listeners being mostly ready to take everything he 
said seriously, and to make too little allowance for 
the keen enjo^^ment of banter and burlesque which 
was one of his characteristics. 

Boswell seems to have been always in a " fan- 
tigue " about Johnson's displeasure, and yet to have 
been frequently "trying it on" with him by raising 
questions, repeatmg conversations, or making remarks 
which were hkely to irritate him. More than that, 
he appears to have missed the humour of some of 
the Doctor's remarks, and interpreted them by the 
grave expression with which they were enunciated 
Yet the humour sometimes had a touch of asperity. 
Boswell says : — 

'•Wli9ii Sir Joshua Eeynolds had j)ainted his portrait, looking 
into the slit of his pen, and holding it almost close to his eye, as was 
his general custom, he felt displeased, and told me ' he would not he 
kno-^Ti hy posterity for his defects only, let Sir Joshua do his worst.' 
I said in reply that Eeynolds had no such difficulties about himself, 
and that he might observe the picture which hung up in the room 
where we were talking, representing Sir Joshua holding his ear in 
his hand to catch the sound. ' He may paint himself as deaf if he 
chooses (replied Johnson), but I will not be blinJcing Sam.'' " 

That could scarcely have been said in actual ill- 



392 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYIII. 

humour. We read these captious remarks in his 
most minute biography, and picture to ourselves the 
rugged face, the burly form, the rolling gait, the 
twitching, the gesticulation, and the talking to him- 
self; and, on the other hand, the periods of silence 
suddenly broken by an outburst of conversation, often 
characterised by a sonorous melody of tone, nearly 
always by a choice of words which expressed with mar- 
vellous and comprehensive exactitude the meaning 
intended to be conveyed. Divesting ourselves of 
preconceived false notions that Johnson was bom- 
bastic or constantly bullying or offensive — and re- 
membering with what delight men of considerable 
culture and high attainments sought his society and 
listened to his varied and illustrative conversation — 
we cannot read the records of his sayings without 
being astonished at the depth of his perception, the 
extent of his learning, and his remarkable estimate of 
the practical philosophy of life. 

His mind had not been strongly applied to 
metaphysical studies, and his judgment, sound and 
powerful as it was, had always been somewhat per- 
verted by gloomy apprehensions, which a wider and 
more spiritual acceptance of the doctrines of Christi- 
anity might have corrected, and a less constant esti- 
mate of personal demerit in relation to a future state 
might have mitigated. 

This melancholy tendency was doubtless accentu- 
ated, even if it had not been caused, by those physical 
conditions of the nervous system which in a weaker 
mind would have led to serious delusions, and were 



XYIII.] 



BOGAUTR AND JOHNSON. 



393 



the occasion of grotesque habits — such as walking 
>with irregular steps, falling into what seemed to 
be paralytic contortions, touching the tops of the 
posts in the streets when he went out alone, and 
so on. 

These tendencies drove him to find forgetfulness 
of himself in society and 
to be grateful to those 
who would call on him, 
as they were glad enough 
to do, and listen to his 
abundant and unfailing 
comments on topics the 
discussion of which re- 
stored his cheerfulness. 
His first liking for Bos- 
well grew into an affec- 
tion, which no bickermg 
could seriously diminish, 
for the man who con- 
tinued to the last his faith- 
ful and admiring friend. 

The effect that his strange contortions had upon 
Hogarth, at their first meeting at the house of 
Richardson, in Salisbury Court, was singTilarly sug- 
gestive. It was soon after the execution of Dr. 
Cameron, for having taken arms for the house of 
Stuart in 1745-6 : and being a warm partisan of 
George the Second, Hogarth observed to Eichard- 
son, that certainly there must have been some very 
unfavourable circumstances lately discovered in this 




SAMUEL JOH^"SO?T. 



{From the Fortrait by Reynolds in 
the ''Lives of the Foets,'' 1781.) 



394 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTEBS. [XYIII. 

particular case, whicli had induced the King to 
approve of an execution for rebelhon so long after' 
the time ^vhen it was committed, as this had the 
appearance of putting a man to death in cold blood, 
and was very unlike his Majestj^'s usual clemenc}^. 
While he was talking, he perceived a person stand- 
ing at a window in the room, shaking his head, 
and rolUng himself about in a strange, ridiculous 
manner. He concluded that he was an idiot, whom 
his relations had put under the care of Mr. Richard- 
son, as a very good man. To his great surprise, 
however, this figure stalked forwards to where he 
and Mr. Richardson were sitting, and all at once 
took up the argument, and burst out into an 
invective against George the Second, as one who, 
upon all occasions, was unrelenting and barbarous; 
mentioning many instances ; particularly, that when 
an officer of high rank had been acquitted by a court- 
martial, Georo'e the Second had, with his own hand, 
struck his name off the list. In short, he clispla3^ed 
such a power of eloquence that Hogarth looked at 
him with astonishment, and actually imagined that 
this idiot had been at the moment inspired. Neither 
Hogarth nor Johnson was made known to the other 
at this interview. 

Hogarth was eminently associated with the High- 
way of Letters, and his pictures have been as powerful 
and striking delineations of the morals and manners of 
the time as the novels of Fielding and Smollett, and 
have proved to be more permanently interesting, not 
only as unsurpassed works of art, but as improving 



XYIII.] il£B,S'. THB,ALE. 395 

moral lessons. He was born in Ship Court, Old Bailey. 
His father kept a school, and he was baptised at the 
Church of St. Bartholomew the Great, East Smith- 
field. Of the estimate Hogarth formed of the strange 
man whom ha had met at Mr. Richardson's, we may 
take the testimony of Mrs. Thrale, who, with her 
husband, afterwards became so close a friend of 
Johnson that he lived, frequently for many days 
together, at their house at Streatham, or at that ad- 
joining the famous brewery in Southwark. In her 
anecdotes of Johnson she says : — 

" Mr. Hogarth, among the variety of kindnesses shewn to me 
when I was too young to have a proper sense of them, was used to be 
very earnest that I should obtain the acquaintance, and if possible the 
friendship, of Dr. Johnson; whose conversation was, to the talk of 
other men, like Titian's painting compared to Hudson's, he said ; ' but 
don't you tell people, now, that I say so (continued he), for the 
connoisseurs and I are at war, you know ; and, because I hate them, 
they think I hate Titian— and let them ! ' Many were, indeed, the 
lectures I used to have in my very early days from dear Mr. Hogarth, 
whose regard for my father induced him, perhaps, to take notice of his 
little girl, and give her some odd, particular directions about dress, 
dancing, and many other matters, interesting now only because they 
were his. As he made all his talents, however, subservient to the 
great purposes of morality and the earnest desire he had to mend 
mankind, his discourse commonly ended in an ethical dissertation, 
and serious charge to me never to forget his picture of the * Lady's 
Last Stake.' Of Dr. Johnson, when my father and he were talking- 
together about him one day : ' That man ' (says Hogarth) ' is not con- 
tented with believing the Bible, but he fairly resolves, I think, to 
believe nothing hit the Bible. Johnson,' added he, ' though so wise 
a fellow, is more like King David than King Solomon ; for he says in 
his haste that all men are liars.' " 

Mrs. Thrale, it need scarcely be said, incurred the 
jealousy of Boswell — though he was invited to her 
house in Johnson's company — and the accuracy and 



396 TSE SmmVAY OF LETTERS. [XYIII. 

the veracity of this lady's anecdotes are sometimes 
called in question, not only by Boswell but b}^ Baretti, 
the teacher of Italian introduced to the family by Dr. 
Johnson himself Mrs. Thrale, who had been Miss 
Hester L}Tich Salisbur}^, and was a lively lady of con- 
siderable talent, was left fatherless when still a 3^oung 
girl, and had, it would seem, married Thrale, the 
brewer, for his position. He appears to have been a 
man like an inferior kind of Dombey in manner 
with some education, and a considerable appreciation 
of Johnson's learning, conversation, and iiitegrity, 
but an equal appreciation of "the pleasures of the 
table" in a dull sort of way. ^Irs. Thrale was a 
plump, bright-eyed, impetuous little woman with 
a marvellous faculty for literary chatter and some 
facility in making verses, or "imitating" the classic 
poets. 

At Boswell's lodgings in Old Bond Street, he and 
Sh Joshua Reynolds, Garrick, Goldsmith, Murphy, 
Bickerstaff, and Thomas Davies, who had first mtro- 
duced Boswell to Johnson, met to dine. One of the 
party who had been invited had not arrived at the 
appointed time, and Boswell proposed to order dinner 
to be served, asking, " Ought six peo^ole to be kept 
waiting for one ? " '•' AMiy, yes/' answered Johnson 
(with a delicate humanity, as Boswell calls it), " if the 
one will suffer more by your sitting do^Ti than the six 
^^'ill do by waiting." 

This Avas the occasion when Goldsmith strutted 
about, drawing attention to his peach-coloured coat, 
made by Mr. Filby, the tailor, in Water Lane. 



XYIII.] OLIVER GOLVSMITS. 397 

The mere mention of Oliver Goldsmith opens up 
one of the most delightful associations of the High- 
way of Letters, though he, the poor, generous, unsus- 
picious, simple genius, could have had httle happiness 
or comfort there, except in the society of those friends 
who, like himself, were attracted and held together by 
the magnetism of Johnson's strong individuality. 
The memory of the author of " The Deserted Village," 
" The Vicar of Wakefield," " The Good-natured Man," 
and " She Stoops to Conquer," is still fresh in the 
regards of the public, now that these pure and charm- 
ing works have been before us for a hundred and 
thirty years, during which time his plays have not 
vanished from the stage, nor his exquisite stories, his 
entertaining essays, his affecting poems, from the 
companionable books which cheer and solace our 
leisure hours. 

Goldsmith, the son of an Irish clergyman, a 
bachelor of Trinity College, a student in Edinburgh 
and at Leyden, a Amnderer on foot over Europe, a 
bachelor of physic at Louvain, returned to England 
almost penniless, became an usher at a school at 
Peckham, a shopman (so it is recorded) to a chemist, 
and failing in an endeavour to pass his examination 
in surgery at Bartholomew's Hospital, with a view 
of serving at sea, was for some time a reader for the 
Press to Richardson, and an occasional writer for 
periodicals. During the time that he was so situated 
he lived in a wretched room in Green Arbour Court, 
in the Old Bailey, a court running mto Seacole Lane, 
and famous for the " breakneck steps " mentioned by 



398 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYIII. 

Ward in his " London Spy." Here, in a miserably 
dirty room, where there was only one chair, so that 
when the compiler of the Percy Reliques called upon 
him and occupied it, there was nothing left but 
to sit on the window, Goldsmith wrote his " Enquiry 
into the State of Polite Learning in Europe." During 
the visit there came a gentle tap at the door, and 
a poor, ragged little girl, of very decent behaviour, 
came in, with " Mamma's compliments " and a polite 
request for the loan of a small quantity of coals. 

A suggestive anecdote this ; illustrative of the 
benevolent kindness — some people called it the easy 
good-nature — of the citizen of the world, who was as 
much a child in many respects as the ragged little 
petitioner. Good-nature, and his losses by gambling, 
kept him poor till the day of his death, in 1774, at 
No. 2, Brick Court, Temple, where he had chambers 
on the second floor, above those of Sir A¥illiam Black- 
stone. 

Goldsmith was closely attached to Johnson, for 
whom he had a genuine admiration and respect, 
and the poet, though he was often the object of 
banter among his friends for his simplicity, said 
charming and witty things. One of his finest 
sayings was in answer to BosAvell, who wondered that 
the Doctor should have been very kind to a man of 
bad character — " He is now become miserable, and 
that ensures the protection of Johnson." 

Goldsmith removed froln Green Arbour Court to 
Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, so named from the 
office for licences for selling wines which was situated 



XTIII.' - TEE OLD CHESHIRE CHEESE." 399 

there, and famous for a celebrated tavern, '•' The Old 
Cheshhe Cheese;"'" which, duiing Johnson's time and 
ever since, has been the resort of men of letters in the 
gi*eat highway. There the Doctor and his friends sat 
in the ro-jm vrliieh is shown to theh snccessoi's 
to-day as the scene of many glorious confabulations — 
the cpeer old room on the left of the low-browed 
entrance. There is the corner where Dr. Johnson sat, 
and the place is famous still for its steaks, its chops, 
its kidneys, its " punch,'"'" its port vrine and ale, while 
gin still goes there by the name of " rack " or 
" arrack,'* and on certain days, the himgiy visitor 
may there partake of the celebrated riunp-steak, 
kidney, and oyster puddings, the carefully prepared 
stewed tripe, or the savoiuy Irish stew. A queer 
ramshackle old taA^rn, vdth an angular and precipi- 
tous staircase, and little steps Ijing in wait for you in 
odd comers, leading to low-ceilinged rooms vrith. 
primitive fin'niture ; but a place where there is a good 
deal of solid comfort, and as traditional among the 
representatives of joumahsm in Fleet Street as the 
" Cogers,'"' that famous debating society, which was 
established in 1756 in a tavern in Bride Lane. 

Goldsmith had the soul of a scholar and a man of 
rehned feeling, though he looked hke an ordinary 
mechanic, and was sometimes supposed to be a 
journeyman tailor. That is what was said of him 
by some of those who cordially admhed his talents : 
but, as we have seen, the tailors have held a very 
good place in the Highway of Letters. There can be 
no doubt, however, that "'poor Goldy" v.as often 



400 THE HIGHWA Y OF LETTERS. [XYIII. 

exceediiigiy gauche in manner, and his simple clumsi- 
ness was accentuated by his singular vanity, not only 
displayed in dress when he could afford new clothes, 
but in his opinion of his own literary ability. He 
is almost a unique example of a man of delicate 




HOGARTH. 



literary appreciation and exquisite skill as a story- 
teller and dramatist, who yet could display a coarse, 
an almost greedy desire, not only for his attainments 
but for his gentihty, to be acknowledged. 

One of the pleasantest resorts of the circle which 
included Johnson, Goldsmith, Burke, and the more 
distinguished members of the club in Gerrard Street, 



XYIII.] THE UGLIEST MAN TO TOAST. 401 

was at Sir Joshua Reynolds' house in Leicester 
Square, where the famous painter gave excellent and 
unconventional suppers, at which Re3aiolds' sister, a 
rather plain lad}^ presided, and other ladies were 
sometimes present. After supper it was customary 
to propose a toast, and Miss Reynolds was asked to 
name someone as the recipient of the compliment. 
As she hesitated, she was required to propose the 
ugliest man she knew. Almost instinctively she 
mentioned Oliver Goldsmith, who, of course, was not 
present, and a lady on the opposite side of the table 
immediately rose and shook hands with her as a sign 
of concurrence. " Thus," said Johnson, " the ancients, 
in the commencements of their friendships, used to 
sacrifice a beast betwixt them." But a few days after- 
wards, at another meeting, the Doctor took with him 
the " Traveller," which had just been published, and 
read it aloud, to the delight of everybody present. 
As he closed the book Miss Reynolds exclaimed, 
" Well, I shall never more think Dr. Goldsmith ugly." 
Still, she could not easily dispel her opinion of the 
poet's appearance, for when her brother painted 
Goldsmith's portrait, and the mezzotint from it was 
pretty freely circulated, she expressed surprise that 
so much of dignity could be given to such a face and 
the likeness be preserved, " as Dr. Goldsmith's cast of 
countenance, and, indeed, his whole appearance from 
head to foot, impressed every one at first sight with 
the idea of his being a low mechanic, particularly, I 
believe, a journeyman tailor." 

The latter notion was probably founded on 

A A 



402 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYIIL 

what Goldsmitli had hnnself said, when he once went 
into Re^TLolds' drawing-room, fussing at some affront 
which he imagined had been offered him in an adja- 
cent coffee-house, by '"a fellow who took me, I believe, 
for a tailor." It was no wonder that the company 
laughed, but they were certainly too read}' to play oft" 
rather too personal jests at the expense of the simple, 
vain, sensitive genius. 

AVe cannot well imagine Rej'nolds himself taking 
any unkindly pleasure in rallnng his fiiend, for his 
was a gentle, generous, and affectionate nature. 

It is said that one reason of the famous portrait 
painter's placid, happy life among his friends and at 
his club was his observation of two maxims which 
his father, a learned, simple-minded schoolmaster in 
Devonshire, master of the Plympton Grammar 
School, had inculcated. Those maxims were — '-The 
great principle of being happy in this world is not to 
mind or be affected with smaU things '' : and, " If you 
take too much care of yourseff nature will cease to 
take care of you." 

Young Reynolds seems to have made practical 
test of these principles, and though, after he had 
ceased to study with his master, Hudson, he went to 
live in Rome, and while copying in a chamber of the 
Vatican caught the severe cold which made him deaf 
for life, he ma}^ be said to have carried them out 
successfully. 

AYhen Reynolds settled in London, in St. Martin's 
Lane, in 1753, Hogarth no longer painted portraits, 
and had, in fact, done nearly all his best work. 



XVIII.] MB. NEWBEBY THE PUBLISHEB. 403 

Hudson was the fashionable portrait painter, but 
there was enough for Keynolcls to do also, and we find 
him raismg his prices from five to twelve guineas for a 
head, and, at a rather later date, both he and Hudson 
charging fifteen for a head, thirty for a half-length, 
and sixt}' for a full-length portrait — fees which to 
some modern successful artists in the first rank 
doubtless seem contemptible. 

RejTLolds was an inveterate snuff-taker, and this 
habit and his compulsory use of an ear-trumpet for 
the purpose of following the conversation of his 
friends, are alluded to in Goldsmith's famous lines in 
"The Retaliation,'' where his tender regard for the 
gentle and accomplished artist finds expression — 

'•Here Eeynolds is laid, and to tell you my mind, 
He lias not left a wiser or better behind. 
His pencil was striking, resistless and grand, 
His manners were gentle, complying and bland ; 
Still bom to improve us in every part — 
His pencil om- faces, bis manners our heart ; 
To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering, 
When they j udged without skill, he was still hard of hearing ; 
^^Tien they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff, 
He shifted his trumiDet, and only took snuff." 

It seems likely from the date that it was from 
Wine Office Court that Goldsmith sent to Doctor 
Johnson to borrow a guinea to pacify his landlady, 
and that the Doctor canied from there the manu- 
script of " The Yicar of Wakefield," which he sold for 
sixty pounds ; but Prior represents Goldsmith as living 
there with a friend or relative of Mr. Xewber}', the 
famous children's bookseller of the corner of St. 
Paul's Churchyard, for whom Goldsmith doubtless 
A A 2 



404 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XVIII. 

wrote some of the very juvenile literature in vogue in 
those days. 

Mr. Newbery was one of the best known men 
in the Highway of Letters at that time, and it was 
of him that Johnson borrowed guineas when he 
was " hard up " for money. Goldsmith said of this 
kind-hearted publisher of children's books, that he 
" was the patron of more distressed authors than 
any man of his time." He appears always to have 
been in a hurry — perhaps to avoid thanks for his 
kindnesses. He is mentioned with respect and 
goodwill by other writers beside Goldsmith, who 
introduces him in "The Yicar of Wakefield" as 
"the philanthropic bookseller in St. Paul's Church- 
yard," who calls at the ale-house where the vicar, 
who is detained for debt, immediately recollects 
the red, pimpled face of the good man who had 
pubhshed for him against the Deuterogamists, and 
of whom he borrowed a few pieces. 

Mr. Newbery's benefactions were frequent and 
unostentatious, and he derived considerable profits 
from his share in the sale of Dr. James's famous 
powder, of which he was one of the vendors. Though 
Johnson had frequent occasion to borrow guineas 
while waiting for payment for his work, he had the 
satisfaction of being free from the hateful trammels 
of the " dedication " and " the patron," without whose 
aid, in the shape of a present or gratuity, in return for 
the compliment of inscribing book or play to his 
honour, few authors or dramatists could realise 
success. Johnson had, with manly determination, 



XYIII.] JOHXSOy AXD BIGHABDSOX 



405 



shaken himself free from the supercilious assump- 
tions of Lord Chesterfield, and completed his Dic- 
tionary without his aid, but till he received a pension 
of £300 a year from the Goyernment, in acknow- 
ledo^ment of his services to learnmo^ he was often in 




COGEES" HALL. (Fro>n an Old Frluf) {p. 399) 



temporary difficulty, especially as he was an open- 
handed, generous fi'iend to those poorer than him- 
self. 

That he had a sincere regard for Richardson is not 
surprising, for Richardson was undoubtedly a good 
and kindly man, and Johnson thought highly, and 
spoke highly, of his novels, which is surprising to 
most modern readers, who have been amazed rather 
than amused that a book like " Pamela " should not 
only have " caught on," as the modern phrase is, but 
should have been regarded as a suitable present for a 



406 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. \XYin. 

young woman going out into the world. Richardson 
wrote it for the purpose of providing something less 
artificial and absurd than the trashy romances which 
were in that day provided for young people; and 
instead of making his characters absurd persons of 
title, took for a heroine a rustic servant girl, whose 
virtuous resolution sustained her against continuous 
and repeated endeavours to overcome it. That this 
book should have been received with unstinted 
admiration in families, and that the author should 
have read it aloud (as he did his subsequent novels 
of " Clarissa HarloAve " and " Sir Charles Grandison ") 
to a circle of ladies, is one of the problems to be solved 
by considering the marvellous changes of points of 
view which have marked the history of that " Polite 
Literature " of which Goldsmith wrote. 

Richardson had what seems to be an unreasonable 
antipathy to Fielding and his works, and Dr. Johnson, 
in com|)aring the two, favours Richardson as a subtle 
delineator of character and the springs and motives 
of human actions, while he considers that Fielding- 
only describes the effects of character m conduct and 
manners. There can be little doubt that the Doctor 
leaned towards Richardson in consequence of his 
personal regard for him ; but Mrs. Piozzi said that 
Johnson acknowledged he had read " Amelia " 
through without stopping, and though " Joseph 
Andrews " was commenced as a kind of parody on 
" Pamela," the author soon gave evidence of power 
and ability which took it out of the ranks of mere 
burlesque and made it vividly real and original. 



XYIII.J MBS. BABBAULD. 407 

Richardson had always dwelt much in the society 
of women. As a youth he had frequently been em- 
ployed by illiterate young women to write their love 
letters. In his maturer age, and especially after his 
second marriage, he was always surrounded by ladies 
who Avere visitors staying "with his wife and daughters, 
either at his second house in Salisbury Square, or at 
his country residence at North End, Fulham, where, 
though his nervous temperament sometimes pre- 
vented him from giving visitors much of his company, 
he benevolently entertained those who needed rest 
and change of air, and received several who were sick 
and suffering. Strangely enough, the sisters of 
Fielding were among the intimate friends of Richard- 
son's family, which says much for his real amiability 
of temper, notwithstanding occasional pettishness and 
intolerance of rivahy m the world of fiction. There 
was plenty of testimony to the domestic and social 
character of Richardson from those who were most 
frequently associated with him, as we may read in 
Mrs. Barbauld's letters, in one of which she quotes 
from an aged correspondent — 

" My first recollection of him was in Lis house in the centre of 
Salisbury Square, or Salisbury Court, as it was then called, and 
of being admitted as a playful child into his study, where I have 
often seen Mr. Young and others, and where I was generally 
caressed and rewarded with biscuits or bonbons of some kind or 
other, and sometimes with books, for which he, and some more of 
my friends, kindly encouraged a taste, even at that early age. . . . 
I recollect that he used to drop in at my father's, for we lived nearly 
opposite, late in the evening to supper, when, as he would say, 
he had worked as long as his eyes and nerves would let him, and was 
come to relax with a little friendly and domestic chat. I, even then, 
used to creep to his knee and hang upon his words, for my whole 



408 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYIII. 

family doted on him ; and once, I recollect that at one of these 
evening visits, prohably about the year 1753, I was standing hy his 
knee when my mother's maid came to summon me to bed, upon 
which, being unwilling to part from him, and manifesting some 
reluctance, he begged I might be permitted to stay a little longer, 
and, on my mother's objecting that the servant would be wanted to 
wait at supper (for in those days of friendly intercourse and real 
hospitality, a decent maid-servant was the only attendant at his oivn 
and many creditable tables, where, nevertheless, much company was 
received), Mr. Eichardson said, 'I am sure Miss P. is now so much a 
woman that she does not want anyone to attend her to bed, but will 
conduct herself with so much propriety, and put out her own candle 
so carefully, that she may henceforward be indulged with remaining 
with us till supper is served.' This hint, and the confidence it 
implied, had such a good eifect upon me that I believe I never 
required the attendance of a servant afterwards while my mother 
lived ; and by such sort of ingenious and gentle devices did he use 
to encourage and draw on young people to do what was right. I 
also well remember the happy days I passed at his house at North 
End, sometimes with my mother, but often for weeks without her, 
domesticated as one of his own children. He used to pass the greater 
part of the week in town; but when he came down, he used to like to 
have his family flock around him, when we all first asked and received 
his blessing, together with some small boon from his paternal 
kindness and attention, for he seldom met us empty handed, and 
was by nature most generous and liberal." 

Mrs. Barbauld herself says of him — 

"The piety, order, decorum, and strict regularity that prevailed 
in his family were of infinite use to train the mind to good habits and 
to depend upon its own resources. It has been one of the means 
which, under the blessing of God, has enabled me to dispense with 
the enjoyment of what the world calls pleasures, such as are found in 
crowds, and actually to relish and prefer the calm delights of retire- 
ment and books. 

*' As soon as Mrs. Eichardson arose, the beautiful Psalms in 
' Smith' s Devotions ' were read responsively in the nursery by her- 
self and daughters, standing in a circle. Only the two eldest were 
allowed to breakfast with her and whatever company happened to be 
in the house, for they were seldom without. After breakfast we 
younger ones read to her in tiu-ns the Psalms and Lessons for the 
day. We were then permitted to pursue our childish sports, or to 
walk in the garden. All dined at one table, and generally drank tea 



XYIII. 



BiCHABDSOX'S pbot:^g:£es. 



-409 



and spent tlie evening in INIrs. Pdcliardson's parlour, where the prac- 
tice was for one of the young ladies to read while the rest sat round a 
large table, and employed themselves in some kind of needlework. 
:SIi. Eichardson generally retii'ed to his study, unless there was par- 
ticular company. . . 

'•He was all his lifetime the patron and protector of the female 

sex. Miss 31 (afterwards 

Lady G ) passed many years 

in his family. She was the 
bosom friend and contemporary 
of my mother, and was so 
much censidered as enfant de 
famine in Mr. Eichardson's 
house that her portrait is intro- 
duced into a family piece. 

"He had many protegies — 
a Miss Eosine, from Portugal, 
was consigned to his care ; but 
of her, being then at school, I 
never saw much. Most of tht 
ladies that resided much at hi:^ 
house acquired a certain degree 
of fastidiousness and delicate 
refinement, which, though 
amiable in itself, rather dis- 
qualified them from appearing 
in genei*al society to the advan- 
tage that might have been 
expected, and rendered an in- 
tercourse with the world uneas\ 
to themselves. gi\Tng a peculiar 
air of shyness and reserve to 
their whole address.'' 




SOPHIA EESCUED. [Ivjin Harrlso/i' s 
Editioi) of "The Vicar of TFakc- 
fteld;' 17'80.) 



The sliy, reserved, rather prira, phimp httle 
man, Tvith his fair wig, his hght brown complexion, 
his hand in the bosom of his A'est, his other hand 
leaning on a cane half concealed by the skirts of his 
coat, but supporting him in case of a sudden dizzi- 
ness, to which he was subject, was not easily " drawn 
out." Sir John Hawkins, Johnson's biographer, tried 



410 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYIII. 

to make Ms acquaintance in a coach, but failed. 
Eichardson would not have cared for the company 
of the pragmatical and somewhat ''superior" Sir 
John, who might have been called " Haw-Haw-kins," 
and was described indirectly in an epitaph — 

" Here lies Sir Jolm Hawkins 
Without shoes or stawkinsy 

It is worth recording that some of Dr. Johnson's 
supposed " tricks " had more reason than many people 
supposed ; for instance, his secreting the pieces of 
Seville orange peel when punch, or negus, or " bishop " 
was being compounded, and storing them on a shelf 
in his room, is accounted for by his practice of dab- 
bling in all kinds of remedies. In a letter to one of 
his earliest and most devotedly-admired lady friends, 
Miss Boothby, he advises her to take grated orange 
peel in port wine as a stomachic. He was frequently 
writing to his friends about their health and his own, 
and advising them to try certain remedies which often 
had little relation to the disorders to alleviate which 
he thought they would be effectual. His own ex- 
treme measures with regard to his physical sufferings 
were such that nothing but his original strength 
of constitution could have enabled him to live to be 
seventy-live. Though he suffered from gout, he alter- 
nated between rigid abstinence and considerable in- 
dulgence in port, between copious blood-letting and 
as copious tea-drinking. When he drank lemonade 
he loaded it with sugar; he would starve for many 
hours, and almost fast for many days, and then go 



XTIII.] EDMUND BURKE. 411 

and eat a large dinner, including dishes that only a 
camel's digestion could have thoroughly disposed of. 
It was not that he was intemperate, but he was fond 
of good things and was undiscriminating. Had he not 
been given to amateur doctoring, or even if he had 
left the care of his health to old surgeon Levett, who 
lived with him, and Avas one of his poor pensioners, 
he would probably have enjoyed life more, and taken 
serener views of it ; but he did enjoy it in a way, and 
when he could be in the company he loved, his low, 
thunderous, chuckling laugh (Davies said he laughed 
" like a rhinoceros ") sounded frequently enough. 
Conversation was his deligfht, thouo'h he seldom com- 
menced it. In fact, his friend Tom Tyers said he was 
like the ghosts, who never speak till they are spoken 
to, and the remark pleased him mightily. 

It was on April 23rd, 1773, that Johnson wrote to 
Goldsmith, who was to take the chair at " The Club," 
that he was about to propose Boswell as a member. 
He had come up to town from Oxford to be 
present, as he feared that some of the members would 
keep Bozzy out. Unlike Johnson, who was a punctual 
and frequent correspondent, Goldsmith "never wrote 
a letter in his life," and does not seem to have replied, 
but Boswell was elected on the 30th, and his great 
ambition was gratified. 

Mrs. Thrale says, in one of her gushing tributes to 
Dr. Johnson, that it might have been said of him, as he 
often delighted to say of Edmund Burke, that, "you 
could not stand five minutes with that man beneath a 
shed, while it rained, but you must be convinced you 



412 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYHl. 

had been standing witli the greatest man you had 
ever seen." This Avas high praise indeed, and Burke, 
an hahitue of Fleet Street, because of his desire to be 
in the charmed circle, doubtless lent brilliancy to the 
little coteries that met there, or at the club in Gerrard 
Street, though Johnson's respect scarcely followed 
him to his retirement to Beaconsfield, after he had 
received a large sum of money from Lord Rocking- 
ham, nor did the Fleet Street sage refrain from a 
severe comment on the subject. 

The fact of his receiving a pension from the 
Government long prevented Johnson from taking any 
part in the political contentions which ended in the 
disturbances associated with John Wilkes and his 
North Briton. But he did not escape by silence the 
ridicule of the caricaturists and the coarse satirists, 
who attacked other eminent pensioners of Lord Bute, 
including Hogarth and Smollett. In 1762 Hogarth 
had entered the lists in defence of the Government, 
against his old friends, Wilkes and Churchill. Wilkes 
had heard of his intention, and endeavoured to dis- 
suade him, at the same time threatening retaliation. 
Hogarth, however, persisted in publishing his carica- 
tures, and the retaliation came in a series of such bitter 
and unscrupulous jibes, with illustrations to match, that 
it was said the death of the great artist, in 1764, was 
hastened, if not caused, by the persecution which he 
had brought on himself He had of course made the 
most of Wilkes' hideous squint and underhung jaw; 
but for this the patriot probably cared little — he was 
too ugly to be unaware that his personal appearance 



XVIII.] THE "NOBTH BBITON." 413 

would be held up to ridicule, and his party was so 
strong in the support of the multitude that they 
could regard his very ugliness as a distinction. 

Johnson at length ventured into the field of 
politics, by opposing Wilkes in a pamphlet entitled " A 
False Alarm," and he, too, received some notice from 
the caricaturists. But the quarrel grew beyond the 
dimensions of newspaper warfare, and the obstinacy 
of the young King George III., and the arrogance of his 
Minister, Lord Bute, led to the resignation of Pitt and 
subsequently to the prosecution and imprisonment of 
Wilkes, who had published, in No. 45 of the North 
Briton, what was called a libellous article on the King's 
speech. It was proposed that Wilkes should be expelled 
the House and the number of the North Briton burnt 
by the common hangman ; but when the Sheriff of 
London, Alderman Harley, with the City officers and 
the hangman, went to Cheapside to burn the obnoxi- 
ous paper, a mob of Wilkites drove them away, 
snatched the half-burnt " libel " from the hangman, and 
carried it to Temple Bar, where they had prepared 
their own bonfire to burn a huge jack-6oo2^, which was the 
popular satirical S3niibol of the detested Scotch Minister. 
Wilkes, on his return from France, was elected 
Member for Middlesex, and London was illuminated, 
though the new member, by a vote of the House, was 
not allowed to sit. At the instigation of the Govern- 
ment a loyal address was prepared, with which a pro- 
cession of 600 merchants and others were to march 
to St. James's. 

At Temple Bar the mob closed the gates and 



414 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTEBS. [XYIII. 

^vould not suffer them to pass, but assailed them 
with mud and stones. The}^ dispersed and met agam, 
but a hearse, bearing pictorial representations of two 
scenes of the riots, in which there had been serious 
loss of life, and in one of which troops had fired on 
people not connected with the political demonstration, 
preceded the loyal addressers, who were roughly 
handled, until several arrests were made, when the 
mob dispersed. 

A subscription was raised for Wilkes, who, with 
Colonel Glyn, was re-elected for Middlesex, in 1774, 
without opposition, and took his seat. He was then 
elected Lord Mayor, and afterwards obtained the office 
of Chamberlain. In 1780 he was re-elected for 
Middlesex, and in 1788 obtained a vote of the House 
to expunge from its journals the declarations formally 
passed against him. 

In May, 1776, Bosvfell, who had been introduced to 
Wilkes, much desired to bring him and Dr. Johnson 
together, and contrived that he should be the bearer 
of an invitation to the Doctor from Mr. Edward Dilly, 
one of the brothers Dilly, booksellers in the Poultry. 
So adroitly did Boswell manage it that Johnson 
went mth alacrity, though he knew it was possible 
that he might meet his former antagonist. They met. 
Johnson sat next to Wilkes at dinner, where a few 
guests had been invited to meet them, and Wilkes, by 
his agreeable manners and animated, as well as 
scholarly, conversation, so won upon the Doctor that 
they had a most agreeable CA-ening. 

It is not on record that Wilkes was ever invited to 



XYIII.] THE ST. JDUNSTAN'S CLUB. 415 

one of Johnson's clubs, or that they afterwards met in 
either of the taverns in Fleet Street, where the Doctor 
and his friends may be said to have formed clubs 
by frequently recurring association, though, singular 
to say, the actual clubs were none of them in Fleet 
Street, but, as we have seen, the principal one was in 
Gerrard Street, and subsequent smaller unpretentious 
clubs, of quiet, sociable men, were at the Essex Head, 
in Essex Street ; in Ivy Lane, by Paternoster Row ; 
and the Queen's Head, St. Paul's Churchyard. Wilkes, 
however, was later associated witk a club in Fleet 
Street which is still in existence. 

This society, entitled the St. Dunstan's Club, vv^as 
founded by seventeen gentlemen, inhabitants of the 
Ward of Farringdon Without, on the 10th of March, 
1790, and used to meet at Anderton's Coffee House 
every other Wednesday evening at eight o'clock. The 
first chairman was the Rev. Joseph Wilhamson, Vicar 
of St. Dunstan's and Mr. Wilkes' Chaplain when he 
was Lord Mayor. The vice-chairman was Deputy of 
the Ward. Among the early members was Mr. Joseph 
Butterworth, in 1792, and in October the same year, 
Mr. John Wilkes, Alderman of the Ward, vv^as elected. 
In the club register is a well-preserved lithographic 
portrait of Wilkes as Lord Mayor, showing the 
squint, the scowl, and the projecting jaw. It was 
published on the 9th of November 1774, and was 
presented to the club by Richard N. Phillips, C.C., 
F.S.A. , on December 1st, 1863. The following is the 
letter, in small, neat writing, sent by Mr. Wilkes 
accepting the membership : — 



416 



TEE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYIII. 



"Grosvenor Square, Oct. 23rd, 1792. 

" Sir, — I beg tlie favour of you, as Secretary to tlie Saint Dunstan's 

Club, to return my sincere and hearty thanks to the members of that 

respectable society for the distinction conferred on me by their 

unanimous vote of electina: me an honourable member. It is no 




THE TRIAL OF WILKES. {Froui a Contemporary Print.) 



small addition to the satisfaction I receive on this occasion that you 
were pleased to communicate to me this testimony of the regard of 
many gentlemen so deservedly high in the esteem of our fellow 
citizens, and in tenns so very obliging. 

" I am, with respect, Sir, 

" Your obliged, humble servant, 
"Mr. WilHams. ''John Wilkes." 

Along with the portrait of Wilkes is a finely-printed 
copy of his address of thanks to the electors of Middle- 
sex, of which the ornamental heading is emblematic of 
civil and religious liberty, with Wilkes's portrait in the 
centre, of a size for cutting out to be converted into a 
" watch paper." The early entries in the club book 
are in that style of careful and ornate penmanship 



XYIII.] WAGEBS AND WELSH BABEBITS. 417 

seldom to be seen except in similar old records, and 
suggesting that specially accomplished scribes were 
chosen as secretaries, or employed to make the entries. 
They consist of reports of the proceedings — which are 
mostly particulars of wagers between members who, 
on hospitable thoughts intent, desired to treat the 
club to wine as an addition to the usual supper, 
which was so modestly inexpensive that a member 
could obtain a Welsh rarebit for twopence. 

On the 2nd of April, 1794, we find recorded a 
wager of a gallon of claret that Robespierre's head 
would be off (if he remained in France) within a 
year. On the 8th of October this wager was reported 
to have been won, as Robespierre's head had fallen 
to the guillotine on the 28th of July. 

Occasionally members would ask permission to 
present to the ckib, or to place upon the table, claret 
or port, in celebration of some event with which they 
were personally concerned — such as a wedding, a 
birthday, or election to some civic or parochial 
honour. What appears to be the last recorded wager 
is on June, 1799, when there was a discussion whether 
cedar-wood formed a portion of the old houses at the 
corner of Chancery Lane. 

An annual dinner was held in the summer, mostly 
at the Grove House tavern, Camberwell, but was dis- 
continued in 1796. Evidences of increased luxury 
seem to exist in the minutes just before this time. 
An annual subscription was voted, because of the 
increased price of wine, and venison was consumed 
at the annual dinner. There are also signs of the 

B B 



418 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XYIII. 

growing custom of citizens living in tlie suburbs away 
from their business, and therefore not attending the 
ckib. 

Wilkes died in December, 1797. The club seems 
to have been removed in 1799, and there are no 
precise minutes till its revival in 1851 by eleven 
gentlemen, inhabitants of St, Dunstan's, the liberty 
of the EoUs, and the precinct of Whitefriars. This 
ncAv society was well supported, and meetings were 
held at the Sussex Hotel, Bouverie Street, till April, 
1858, when the hotel was closed, and the club moved 
first to Dick's Coffee House, then to Peele's at the 
corner of Fetter Lane, then to the Rainbow, and finally 
to the Old Cheshire Cheese, where it remains and 
flourishes in something of its ancient state, its latest 
president having been the newly-elected, popular and 
accomplished Alderman of the Ward of Farringdon 
Without. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE CLOSE OF AN ERA IN THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 

The Mug-house Riots —Read's in Salisbury CoTirt — The Fleet Prison- 
William Penn — Richard Savage — Huggins and Bambridge — 
Horrible Cruelties — The Commission of Enquiry — Hogarth's 
Picture — The Gordon Riots — John Scott, Lord Eldon — Wil- 
liam Scott, Lord Stowell — The " Perch," in Cursitor Street- 
Love and Law — Sprat Suppers — " Crocodile " Eldon — Diamond 
Cut Diamond — The Later Days of Dr. Johnson — The Thrales 
and the Riots — Death of Mr. Thrale— Marriage of Mrs. Thrale 
and Piozzi — Death of Dr. Johnson — From Fleet Street to West- 
minster Abbey — The House in Bolt Court — Stationers' Company 
— Nevs^spapers — Reports of Debates Forbidden — Abbreviated 
Accounts of Proceedings—" Liberty of the Press "■ — Newspapers 
in 1818 and in 1893. 

The " Wilkes and Liberty " riots may well have 
reminded the frequenters of Fleet Street of the 
serious disturbances which had occurred there at an 
earlier date. 

Those tumults which had previously given an evil 
distinction to Whitefriars had mostly ceased after the 
abolition, in the reign of William III., of those pre- 
tended rights of sanctuary which had been claimed 
in some quarters of London, but Richardson was 
twenty-six years old — and was probably still working 
as a journeyman with Mr. Wild, the printer, to whom 
he had been apprenticed — when Salisbury Court, 
Fleet Street, the scene of his future labours and his 
future fame, was noted for serious riots at an ale- 
house kept there by one Read. This house became a 
" mus^-house," or one of the taverns, of which there 
B b2 



420 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTEBS. [XIX. 

were several in the neighbourhood, where the Whig- 
supporters of the House of Hanover met in defiance 
of the Tories, who had frequently gathered the largest 
mobs on some public occasions. The " mug-houses " 
seem to have originated in Long Acre, where clubs 
were formed at certain taverns, in which lawyers, 
tradesmen, and some of the \Aniig gentlemen used to 
meet in the evenings to drink ale, each out of his 
own mug. The president sat on a high chair, a 
harp was played at the lower end of the room, and 
now and then one of the company enlivened the pro- 
ceedings with a song. These "mug-houses" were 
afterwards established in various quarters, for the 
express purpose of enabling loyal tradesmen to 
assemble for the purpose of political demonstrations 
against the Jacobites, who, in return, gathered in force, 
and succeeded in wrecking some of the taverns. 
Among the first of the " mug-houses " attacked by 
them was that kept by Read, into which the mob 
succeeded in forcing a way, driving the customers 
upstairs, breaking up the furniture, flinging the 
mugs into the street, and drinking the ale. There 
was a desperate fight, and Read, who was severely 
beaten, shot the ringleader, for which he was after- 
wards tried for murder, but acquitted. The riots 
reached to a pitch which demanded strong measures, 
and a military force was employed to suppress them — 
the end of it being that several lads were hanged 
for participation in tumults in which they had 
probably joined from sheer mischief. 

The Fleet Prison, though it had ceased to be a 



XIX.] THE SECOND FLEET PRISON. 42l 

place for the incarceration of political offenders, and 
was, in name at least, reserved for debtors only, after 
the abolition of the Star Chamber, had still an evil 
reputation for the cruelties to which the unfortunate 
wretches were subjected who were detained there 




WEDDING IN THE FLEET. . (Froiii a Tfint of the IStli Ce)itunj.) 

— many of them hopeless of obtaining release from 
merciless creditors, and many also who, being con- 
fined there for contempt of court, found that they 
were consigned to what was likely to be perpetual 
imprisonment, because of their inability to follow 
any avocation by which they could earn money for 
the discharge of their liabilities. 

The old prison, burnt down in the Great Fire, had 
been succeeded by another building, in which the old 
atrocities seemed to be perpetuated. Those prisoners 
who could find friends to pay for the privilege of 



422 THE HIGSWAY OF LETTERS. [XIX. 

taking lodgings for tliem "within tlie rules" were 
mostly sucli as were able to look forward to obtaining 
a release, and as "the rules" extended to a consider- 
able neighbourhood around the prison walls, their 
personal liberty was considerable, though they had 
to pay for the surveillance of one of the prison 
officials. William Penn had been one of those to 
whom this privilege was granted ; and later, the 
unhappy and ill-regulated Richard Savage had been 
maintained in lodgings in " the liberty of the Fleet " 
by friends, who seemed to think that it was about as 
much liberty as he would be likely to profit by. 
Within the prison itself the atrocities were such 
that the}^ rivalled those intlicted by the former 
wicked warden, of whom we have already spoken. 

The office of warden was a patent office, and was 
often sold or let for a period to the highest bidder. 
The person who rented it, therefore, made as much 
as possible out of the miserable creatures who were 
at his mercy, by mulcts and exorbitant charges, en- 
forced by close confinement, fetters, starvation, and 
sometimes by the use of actual instruments of 
torture. The dark and horrible records of the 
Fleet Prison — such of them as were made j^^^blic 
by the evidence taken by a Parliamentary Committee 
of Enquiry in 1725 — are like a minor episode in the 
history of the Inquisition, and include several varie- 
ties of inhumanity, among which were the refusal of 
common necessaries of life, exposure to gaol fever 
and smallpox, with the prospect of death from one 
or other of these diseases alone terminating the 



XIX.] TEE HORBOBS OF THE GAOL. 423 

hopeless incarceration of those who could not 
comply with the monstrous exactions for permission 
to remain in one of the three " spunging houses " 
attached to the prison, and belonging to the chief 
warden, or to find a squalid lodging outside the 
walls, and pay extra fees for the watchful attend- 
ance of an under-warden. 

The wardenship had been rented by a scoundrel 
named Huggins, and he underlet it to one Bambridge, 
an equally rapacious and a still more hardened 
and inhuman wretch, who not only inflicted cruelties 
on the unfortunate prisoners on a kind of graduated 
scale, in accordance with their reluctance or inability, 
or that of their friends, to yield to his extortions, 
but actually kept several persons in durance after 
they had been legally discharged, and, in some 
instances, kidnapped liberated prisoners and forcibly 
kept them in the Fleet, that he might exact money 
for their maintenance or a large sum for their 
ultimate release. This villain would connive at the 
escape of a prisoner for a handsome consideration, 
but the chances were that the victim would 
be re-arrested after the bribe was paid. Prisoners 
of importance were charged heavily for permission 
to live within "the liberties" of the gaol. Those 
who could not pay, but were suspected of having 
affluent friends, were consigned to the worst cells, 
loaded with irons, deprived of food, or punished 
with instruments of torture, which they were forced 
to wear till their limbs and bodies were cramped 
and distorted. The rapacity of Bambridge was such 



424 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIX. 

that he even seized the contributions dropped by 
charitable persons into the box held by the suffering 
and starving wretches, who took their turns at the 
small grate, or opening, by the gate, where they uttered 
their doleful ajDpeals to the humanity of those who 
passed to and from Fleet Street, and were implored 
to " remember the poor debtors." 

The evil reputation which clung to the Fleet 
Prison when Prynne had his nose slit and his ears 
cut off, and "honest John Lilburne" stood in the 
pillory and addressed the crowd in dumb show after 
he had been gagged, was perpetuated when its 
inmates were no longer regarded as prisoners of 
State, placed there for political offences. 

Poets, essayists, pamphleteers, frequenting the 
Highway of Letters, had denounced the monstrous 
iniquities of the place and the cruelties inflicted 
there, and at last a parliamentary committee of 
enquiry was appointed, and sat at the prison, where 
witnesses were examined and some of the miserable 
victims were brought forward and confronted with 
Bambridge and his myrmidons. 

The well-known picture by Hogarth depicts the 
scene, and its publication doubtless hastened the 
suppression of the infamous practices, just as the 
word-painting of Charles Dickens, who was the 
Hogarth of modern literature, expedited the de- 
struction of the building which succeeded to the 
reversion of an evil reputation. He exposed, in 
"Pickwick," the misery and injustice which attended 
the system of imprisonment for debt made per- 



XIX.J THE GORDON BIOTS. 425 

petual by so-called contempt of court, whicli often 
meant not refusal, but inability, to pay the instal- 
ments ordered for debts and costs. How, without 
release, there could be means of earning money for 
the satisfaction of creditors and officials, does not 
appear to have been considered. 

Before the parliamentary enquiry, Huggins, the 
original renter of the wardenship, grew alarmed, and 
mitigated some of the neglect and cruelty ; but Bam- 
bridge, a more resolute and truculent scoundrel, 
continued his extortions while the committee was 
deliberating, and he was suffered to retain the position 
which he had purchased till the enquiry concluded 
in a determination that he should no longer hold the 
office. It is said that twenty years after the examina- 
tion he cut his throat, but whether through fear or 
remorse is not known. The more monstrous cruelties 
inflicted on the prisoners were diminished or had 
ceased, and the instruments of torture had been 
removed ; but cases of serious inhumanity and oppres- 
sion continued until the Fleet Prison was burnt and 
demolished, along with Newgate and Bridewell, by 
the Anti-Popery rioters in 1780, amidst the depre- 
dations committed by those lawless followers of Lord 
George Gordon. 

To depict the aspect of the Highway of Letters 
during that time, when the vast multitude of rioters 
filled the streets, and unchecked by a timid and 
appalled magistracy and an undecided Government, 
carried death and destruction with them, and let 
loose on law-abiding citizens the worst calamities 



426 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIX. 

attending the abandonment of all regard for law and 
for humanity, would be superfluous. The great master 
of fiction has told that story in " Barnaby Rudge " 
with a fidelity and an historical accuracy which is 
illumined, and in no way exaggerated, by the vivid 
and picturesque manner in which the narrative is 
presented. 

Before the suppression of the riots, soldiers were 
picketed in churchyards and in the halls of City Com- 
panies, the Inns of Court were barricaded, and at the 
Temple a strong body of the members assembled 
within the gates to repel any attack that might be 
made. It turned out that they Avere rather an 
obstruction than otherwise to the military officers 
who commanded a small detachment of soldiers for 
their protection ; and Fleet Street was, in fact, almost 
entirely occupied by troops when the excesses of the 
enormous crowds which had concentrated in Holborn 
had grown beyond the power of the timid civil 
authorities to prevent them. 

Among the members of the Temple who mounted 
guard inside the gate was John Scott, afterwards Lord 
Eldon. He and his elder brother, WiUiam, afterwards 
Lord Stowell, were both in London. They were sons 
of a coal " fitter " and publican of Newcastle-on-Tyne, 
and were both destined to become eminent judges — 
John rising by various stages of legal honours to the 
Chancellorship and the title of Earl of Eldon, and 
William to be Chief Judge of the Admiralty Court, 
with the title of Lord Stowell. Earty in his profes- 
sional career William was introduced to Dr. Johnson, 



XIX.] JOBN 8G0TT. 427 

and by his influence was elected a member of the 
Literary Club. Both the brothers were prominent 
figures in Fleet Street, as they would have been any- 
where, because of their tall and robust forms and 
handsome appearance, but the name of John Scott 
was most often associated with the Highway of 
Letters and with Chancery Lane ; for, as he afterwards 
told his secretary, Cursitor Street was his "first 
perch," and he had often run to Fleet Market with 
sixpence in his hand to buy sprats for supper. The 
coal fitter, publican and insurance broker of New- 
castle had made some money, and sent his sons to 
Oxford, and John, at twenty-one years of age, while 
still a student, and without any profession or calling, 
fell in love with Miss Elizabeth Surtees, a young lady 
of remarkable beauty, daughter of a Newcastle banker. 
As his pretensions were not favourably received by 
the family, John Scott persuaded her to elope with 
him^ and they were married at Gretna Green. On 
their return they were not, of course, received with 
enthusiasm, and though the father of the bride was 
kindly, it was two or three years before a complete 
reconciliation took place. The young couple, who 
were deeply devoted to each other, came to London, 
where John entered as a student at the Temple, and 
commenced the career which was marked by a 
series of attainments to high legal ofiices till he 
became Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and 
Lord Chancellor in 1801. He virtually retired after 
the death of his beloved wife in 1831, and his old 
age became lonely. He had not made intimate 



he 



428 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIX. 

friends of men of rank and station, and such 
companions as he associated with were mostly 
somewhat commonplace gossips. Unlike his brother, 
had never cultivated any proficiency either in 

writing or speaking 
elegantly, or even 
correctly. His 
judgments in 
Chancery were ex- 
pressed in almost 
illiterate fashion, 
and he was ex- 
ceedingly tedious. 
On the trial for 
treason of the fa- 
mous Home Tooke 
and Thomas Hardy, 
the Secretary of 
the London Corres- 
pondents' Society, 
he spoke for eight hours. Tooke who was a scholar, 
and it may be supposed somewhat of a purist as 
regarded style and expression, said, when acquitted, 
that he would rather be hanged out of hand next 
time than listen to one of Sir John Scott's speeches. 

It was said that Scott took so long to make up his 
mind that suitors suffered more injury than would 
have been inflicted by a wrong decision. There were 
many amusing, but often scurrilous, jests current on 
the subject of these see-saw judgments, and his readi- 
ness to shed tears at the time that he pronounced 




Johnson's pew in st. clement danes' 



XIX.] " CROCODILE ELDOX." 429 

judgment empliasised the adverse opinion that his 
conchisions were not always to be respected. Of 
course, a great deal was made of this habit by those 
who considered themselves the victims of an inequit- 
able decision. His declaration, with an oath and a 
tear or tY\'o, that Queen Caroline was guilty, procured 
him the dishke of the public and the sobriquet of 
" Crocodile Eldon," while the scathing lines in 
Shelley's '' Masque of Anarchy " — directed against 
the judge for his perfectly legal and moderate 
decision in the trial which settled the question of 
the custod}^ of the poet's children — made the charges 
of vacillation and h}^ocrisy still more significant : — 

" Next came Fraud, and he had on, 

Like Lord E , an ermine gown ; 

His big tears — for he wept well — 

Turned to millstones as they fell; 

And the little children, who 

Round his feet played to and fro, 

Thinking every tear a gem, 

Had their brains knocked out by them." 

Eldon socially had the reputation, not undeserved, of 
being mean even to inexcusable parsimon}^, though 
he was known to give away considerable sums, be- 
cause he could not endure to witness pain or distress. 
This quality may be taken into account in esti- 
mating his habit of crjdng on the bench, and he was 
certainly not a hard-hearted man. He liked what 
are called the pleasures of the table, but they were 
greatest when, like the intoxicated fly in the late 
Harry Leigh's song, he could indulge in " the rapture 
of drinking at somebody else's expense." His own 



430 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIX. 

favourite dish was liver and bacon, and for a niglit- 
cap a great goblet of ale ; that of bis brother, Lord 
Stowell, was steak and oyster pie, with a bottle or two 
of port. Either of them, however, would, as John 
said of William, drink any given quantity of wine, 
and both possessed a certain fascination of manner 
and person which made them frequent guests at well- 
supplied feasts. Probably Lord Stowell was as close 
as his brother, and his characteristic was known. 
It was he who, sitting next to the famous physician. 
Sir Henry Halford, at dinner, asked him a question 
which involved a medical opinion, and would ordi- 
narily have carried a fee. The acute doctor was not 
to be caught so easily, and replied, " A man's health is 
generally in his own keeping ; you know the old 
saying, that at forty a man is either a fool or a 
physician." " Why not both ? " retorted the un- 
rufEed lawyer. 

We may, perhaps, touch more lightly on Lord 
Eldon's alleged meanness if we remember that 
early necessities, and the need for rigid economy, 
have this effect on some natures, and certainly John 
Scott, the law student, and his pretty young wife 
were poor enough ; but the poverty was associated 
with romantic and sincere affection, which continued 
to the last. 

There are few brighter or more suggestive pictures 
in the story of the neighbourhood of Fleet Street than 
that of the handsome, stalwart young husband work- 
ing at his books, with a wet towel bound round his 
head, in the humble lodoino^, while the beautiful 



XIX.J A SPBAT SUPPEB. 431 

young wife, his ever-loved " Bessie," comes, fresh 
and blooming, along Carey Street, carr^dng in one 
hand a dish of sprats, which she has purchased in 
Clare Market, and in the other is a pot of foaming 
porter, food and drink for an excellent supper where 
love is. 

Not the least remarkable feature of the Gordon 
riots was the activity of Alderman John Wilkes, 
who was not the sort of man to show the white 
feather, but immediately formed a band of volun- 
teers for the protection of the Bank of England, 
and probably diverted a threatened attack upon it 
by the mob. He had become a comparatively staid 
and loyal person, and the riots which had been 
signalised by the burning of the boot at Temple 
Bar were beginning to be forgotten. 

Dr. Johnson himself, in Bolt Court, had ample 
opportunit}^ of witnessing the terror and destruction 
caused by the ungovernable mob, which in a few 
days had so cowed the authorities that a horseman, 
quite alone, rode down Fleet Street demanding money 
for the rioters, which the tradesmen there were afraid 
to refuse to hand to him. The shopkeepers did not 
call his authority in question lest they should be 
denounced and their houses marked for pillage and 
demolition. 

In letters to Mrs. Thrale, the Doctor, then seventy 
years of age, gave some account of the riots after 
they had been suppressed. The Thrale family were 
at Bath for Mrs. Thrale's health, and their old friend 
in Bolt Court refrained from sendino- details while 



432 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIX. 

everybody was "impressed witli consternation," no- 
body being sure of safety. He mentions tbe de- 
struction of Lord Mansfield's liouse, and of that of 
Sir John Fielding, the blind magistrate, and brother 
of Henry Fielding, the novelist — who had the courage 
to commit to prison such rioters as were arrested at 
an early stage of the outbreak. 

He walked to see the ruins of Newgate with Dr. 
Scott, afterwards Lord Stowell, and saw the mob 
deliberately robbing the Sessions House in the Old 
Bailey. There was some prudence in his waiting 
till the riots were suppressed before writing to the 
Thrales, for the Southwark contingent of the mob 
had threatened the house, and particularly the 
brewer}'-, under the assumption or pretence that the 
brewer was a Papist. By the prompt adriotness of 
Perkins, the manager, the invaders were pacified by 
being voluntarily supplied with plenty of beer and 
an ample meal; and though Miss Burney's diary 
informs us that the house was three times attacked, 
and that the house at Streatham was threatened, the 
children, plate, money, and valuables were removed. 
A body of Guards arriving at St. Margaret's Hill 
in SouthAvark, a number of rioters were arrested, and 
the danger Avas at an end. This was communicated 
to Mrs. Thrale by the Doctor, though she had al- 
ready received the news from Perkins."^ The Thrales 
hastily left Bath for Brighton, and thence home. 
Mrs. Thrale wrote to Miss Burney : " My master was 

* He became a partner of the Barclays, the purchasers of the 
brewery after Thrale' s death. 



XIX.] THE BIOTEBS AT THBALE'S BREWERY. 433 

not displeased that I had given Perkins two hundred 
guineas, instead of one — a secret I never durst tell 
before, not even to Johnson, not even to you." 




GOUaH SQUAEE. 



Subsequent letters from Johnson repeated some 
further details, the committal of Lord George Gordon 
to the Tower, and the suppression of the riots by the 
c c 



434 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTEBS. [XIX. 

trooj)s. In one of these he wrote : " Mr. John Wilkes 
was this day wdth a party of soldiers in my neighbour- 
hood to seize the publisher of a seditious paper." 
AVilkes had been elected City Chamberlain, and his 
politics had undergone considerable mitigation, if 
not transformation. 

On the whole, this was perhaps one of the hap- 
piest periods — or, at all events, the most serene 
period — of Johnson's life. He was closely engaged 
on his " Lives of the Poets," which gave him constant 
occupation and yet allowed him some leistire for 
visiting and entertaining some of the friends who 
were left to him ; and his health improved, probably 
in consequence of his engagements leaving him little 
time for brooding over his ailments. His letters 
had less of that quertilous tone which too often 
seems to disturb his corresjDondence. And there 
were other evidences of his calm and equable con- 
dition, one of which was his writing to his former 
negro servant, Francis Barber, from Rochester, to 
prepare a little dinner to celebrate his birthday on 
his return — an anniversary all reference to which he 
had formerly avoided. But the dinner was to be 
for those of his poor friends who still lived in his 
house in Bolt Court, or those who were to be invited 
thither. Whenever he had a suitable home he 
housed poor friends, Avho were, to some extent at 
least, pensioners depending on his bounty for 
lodging and partial support ; and these he treated 
with polite consideration, inviting them to dinner 
with him, or dining or taking tea with one or other 



XIX.] BR. JOHNSON'S PENSIONERS. 435 

of them, by his own request or their invitation, and 
in their own apartments. Poor blind old Mrs. Wil- 
liams, the daughter of a Welsh gentleman, had come 
to London to consult an oculist, and had taken up 
her abode in Gough Square while Mrs. Johnson was 
livmg ; and when the Doctor went to Bolt Court she 
was reinstated, and treated with a gentle considera- 
tion which must have been sometimes difficult, espe- 
cially when the Doctor had to interpose between her 
and Mrs. Desmoulins and her daughter, two other in- 
mates. These, with the poor old broken-down surgeon 
— who still had his own little w^orks of charity and 
benevolence to maintain — and Francis Barber, the 
negro lad who had been his attendant from the early 
days of his living in London, and w^ho, w^hen mar- 
ried, remained in his service, formed the household, 
in which the large and considerate humanity of 
Johnson could endure even the bickerings of the 
w^omen rather than abandon his self-imposed care . of 
them in their poverty or distress. 

To Mrs. Williams, because of her affliction, and 
also because of sympathy with her mental capacity 
and sound common sense, he was always obliging 
and respectful, though she was often querulous and 
exacting. When he went out to dine at the Mitre 
he would often send her some little dainty, lest she 
should feel that she had been neglected These traits 
of genuine tenderness and disinterested beneficence 
w^ere expressed without ostentation, and only his 
intimate friends knew of his simple, unaffected 
charity. We are too much accustomed to regard 
c c 2 



436 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIX. 

Johnson's character as mterpreted by his argumenta- 
tive utterances, his deep, sonorous voice, and his huge, 
ungainly figure, and pay too httle attention to the 
subtle observation and estimate of sentiment and 
emotion which often appeared in his conversation 
and his writings. This quality of insight into the 
dee|)er springs of character may have been the 
cause of his accentuated preference of Richardson to 
Fielding. What can be finer^ for instance, than the 
passage in the " Rambler " where he says " There are 
minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude 
is a species of revenge, and they return benefits not 
because recompense is a pleasure, but because obliga- 
tion is a pain " ? 

Not all his auditors could estimate the real depth 
of Johnson's character, and it appears that they 
could not always interpret his persiflage or the 
talent Avhich he displayed for travesty or burlesque. 
He was so very serious when he was serious, and so 
impressive when he was profound, that people Avere 
ever ready to take his utterances seriously, nor can 
we who read of them alwa^'s discriminate. For 
instance, was he speaking from self-conviction when, 
the conversation turning upon Dr. Barnard, the 
provost of Eton, who had recently died, Johnson, after 
eulogising his wit, his learning, and goodness of heart, 
said, with apparent seriousness, " He Avas the only man 
that did justice to my breeding ; and you may observe 
that I am well-bred to a degree of needless scrupu- 
losity. No man is so cautious not to mterrupt 
another: no man thinks it so necessary to appear 



XIX.] JOHNSON'S JEST AND EARNEST. 437 

attentive when others are speaking; no man so 
steadily refuses preference to himself, or so willingly 
bestows it on another as I do ; nobody holds so strongly 
as I do the necessity of ceremony and the ill-effects 
which follow the breach of it. Yet people think me 
rude, but Barnard did me justice"? 

It is to the alleged recollections of Mrs. Thrale 
when she had become Mrs. Piozzi, that we owe the 
anecdote, and the statement that Johnson's declaration 
was listened to by his friends with amazement. Is 
it possible that this, like other statements of that 
lad}^-, after the termination of the long friendship,- 
till a short time before the Doctor's death, is to be 
received with some amount of hesitation ? There 
is ample evidence that she was not always accurate in 
her anecdotes, or scrupulous in her representations. 

In another reminiscence she records that " Mr. 
Johnson was exceedingly disposed to the general 
indulgence of children, and was even scrupulously and 
ceremoniously attentive not to offend them. He had 
strongly persuaded himself of the difficulty people 
always find to erase early impressions, either of 
kindness or resentment." 

In less than a year after the Gordon riots, and 
Johnson's letters concerning them, Mr. Thrale, who 
had seemed to be recovering, died suddenly at the 
house which he had taken for his family in Grosvenor 
Square ; and Johnson, as his custom was, sought 
society for the purpose of mitigating his grief 
and preventing himself from melancholy brooding 
over it. 



438 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIX. 

A week before Thrale's deatb there had been a gay 
dinner party at the house. A note written by Mrs. Thrale 
to Madame d'Arblay was endorsed by the recipient. 
" Written a few hours after the death of Mr. Thrale, 
which happened by a sudden stroke of apoplexy on 
the morning of a day on which half the fashion of 
London had been invited to an assembly at his 
house." 

Dr. Johnson had been called to him on the 
previous night, and found him insensible and con- 
vulsed. He remained in the room to attend him all 
night, except that he twice visited Mrs. Thrale. 
As Thrale's executor, he took great delight in going 
about Avith pen and ink, making estimates and in- 
ventories at the brewery, which had to be sold, and 
signing cheques for considerable amounts, in con- 
nection with the disposal " not of so many vats and 
casks, but of the potentiality of wealth beyond the 
dreams of avarice." Almost immediately after her 
husband's death, Mrs. Thrale hurried to Streatham, 
and thence to Brighton and to Bath. Johnson had 
much to do as executor; and he had none but 
grateful memories and sincere grief for the friend 
whom he had lost. At seventy-one years of age a 
premonition of loneliness and of desertion seemed 
to trouble him. His letters to Mrs. Thrale were 
often plaintive in their expressions of continued 
regard and anxious solicitude for her welfare and 
that of her dauQ^hter, but as time went on he seemed 
to perceive that her answers were irregular, and 
often displayed httle sincerity of sentiment. The 



XIX.] WAXIXG FEIEXI'.^HIP. 439 

sentiment seemed to have been exhausted, and, in 
fact, there was a reason for her apparent lapse of 
regard, for it soon became known that she was con- 
templating re-marriage. She had accepted Mr. Thrale 
chiefly at her mother's instance, because it was a good 
match, and she had become aware that he proposed to 
her after having run the gaimtlet of some other 
young ladies, who refused to hve in the house by the 
brewery at Southwark. Her agreement to do so had 
seciu'ed him. 

As he left her an ample fortune, she now deter- 
mined to marry according to her own inclination. 
Piozzi, she said, was a gentleman, which Thi-ale had 
not been, and there seem to haye been few or no 
obstacles to her becoming his wife, except the well- 
founded anticipation of the opposition of Dr. Johnson. 
That was not to stand in the way. She continued the 
correspondence with the Doctor, but did not send for 
him to stay at Streatham as she had formerly done, 
though his sohtude eyentually impelled him to giye 
imploiing suggestions that she should renew those 
inyitations. In truth, he was lonely enough, for the 
inmates of his house, the recipient's of his bounty, 
were no longer with him : Leyett was dead, and Mi-s. 
WiUiams, after long lingering in pain and weakness, 
had been carried to the graye. Madame Desmoulins 
and her daughter had departed to dwell elsewhere. 
Goldsmith, Garrick, Beauclerk, and others of his early 
and attached friends, were no longer heard in the 
once conyiyial circle of wit and learning, and the 
attempt to foiTQ a club ia lyy Lane of respectable 



440 TBE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIX. 

men who were not politicians met with but Httle 
success. 

In thinking of the meetings at Streatham, and of 
the bright, chattering, somewhat heartless little lady 
who kept them alive till her great friend appeared to 
kindle them into flame, Johnson may have recalled 
with bitterness his own keen observation, "The 
most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay or 
dislike, hourly increased by causes too slender for 
complaint and too numerous for removal. Those who 
are angry may be reconciled, those Avho have been 
injured may receive a recompense, but when the 
desire of pleasing and willingness to be pleased are 
silently diminished the renovation of friendship is 
hopeless, as when the vital powers sink into languor 
there is no longer any use of the physician." 

Johnson's reply to the announcement of her 
marriage — before she was really married to Piozzi — 
contained, as she probably expected it would contain, 
some reflections at which she could profess sufficient 
offence to sever the friendship which had lasted a 
quarter of a century ; and the wise old man who had 
been her adviser, teacher, familiar correspondent, and 
the confidential referee of the family, would have been 
left to the solitude he dreaded and deplored, but for 
more faithful friends, who visited him to the last, and 
were with him or near him on that night of cold and 
snow, December 12th, 1784, when he passed peacefully 
away. 

The procession of mourning coaches, bearing those 
who followed his remains to Westminster Abbey, 



XIX.] 



FUNERAL OF JOHNSON. 



441 



made a gloomy spectacle in the Highway of Letters. 
About fifty of those who had loved him and honoured 




JOHNSON'S HOUSE IN THE TEMPLE, 1780. 



his memory took part in the solemn observance, and 
among them were Burke, Reynolds, Hoole, Sir Joseph 



442 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIX. 

Banks, Malone, Stephens, Dr. Burney, Byland, and 
other representative men. The faithful Langton, who 
had taken a lodging near Bolt Court that he might 
attend his friend, was there, and was one of the six 
pall-bearers. 

We read of an earlier date when Johnson was 
writing sermons for his friend, the Rev. John Ta3dor, 
LL.D., of Ashbourne, who had told him that he 
should be his heir, but of whom he said to Reynolds, 
" Sir, I love him, but I do not love him more ; my 
regard for him does not increase. As it is said in the 
Apocrypha, ' his talk is of bullocks ' (Ecclus. xxxviii. 
25). I do not suppose he is very fond of my company. 
His habits are by no means sufficiently clerical : this 
he knows that I see ; and no man likes to live under 
the eye of perpetual disapprobation." 

Dr. Taylor outlived Johnson, and it was he who 
performed the mournful office of reading the funeral 
service over the body of his friend in Westminster 
Abbey. 

Dr. Johnson had lived for the greater part of his 
life in various places in and off Fleet Street — in Fetter 
Lane, Boswell Court, Gough Square, Inner Temple 
Lane, Johnson's Court, and Bolt Court. Boswell 
Court and Johnson's Court had not been named after 
the Doctor or his biographer. The former was so 
called from Boswell House, the abode of a Mr. Boswell 
in the time of Elizabeth, and its site was built upon 
in 1614. Lady Raleigh, widow of Sir Walter, lived 
there, and later the Lord Chief Justice and Lady 
Lyttelton, and Lady and Sir Richard Fanshawe, the 



XIX.] JOHNSON'S HOUSE IN BOLT COURT. 443 

latter famous in the World of Letters, and as an 
ambassador of Charles I. Johnson was always 
diverted by the notion of living in a court with 
his own name, and while in the Hebrides called 
himself " Johnson of that ilk." 

Among the pleasantest recollections of Dr. John- 
son are those of his delight in watering the garden 
of his house in Bolt Court, and of his devout par- 
ticipation in Divine service at the church of St. 
Clement Danes', where his seat was in the north 
gallery, near the pulpit. 

The house in Bolt Court was occupied after John- 
son's death by Mr. Allen, a printer, who was succeeded 
by Mr. Bensley. Contrary to representations made in 
various descriptive paragraphs in professed accounts 
of the locality, Mr. Bensley neither made alterations in 
the house, nor impaired its interest by improvements, 
till, in 1817, some repairs to the structure and a new 
roof had become absolutely necessary. There had 
been a fire which injured the premises in 1807, but 
it had not reached the rooms formerly occupied 
by Dr. Johnson. In 1819, however, another and 
more disastrous fire totally destroyed the building. 
The family of Mr. Bensley, who had owned and 
resided in it from the time when his father suc- 
ceeded to it, sold the freehold of what had been 
the site of four houses and a large garden to the 
Stationers' Company, who afterwards built their school 
there. 

We have seen how the earl}^ printers in Fleet 
Street — Avho were also booksellers and publishers — 



444 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIX. 

were affected by the establishment of the Stationers' 
Company, which retained some of its monopohes or 
privileges for many years, and its claims to demand 
the right of participating in the publishing of books 
for which it had granted a license. These claims 
dwindled during the growth and extended freedom of 
the press, until they covered little except the right 
of registering and the monopoly of publishing astro- 
logical almanacks. AYe also note that the business 
of the printer and that of the bookseller or pub- 
lisher were separated, and even in the early part of 
the eighteenth century the publisher or bookseller 
often insisted on the author bearing the expense, 
or part of the expense, of printing, which was one 
reason for the necessity of seeking for a patron who 
would make the author a handsome present as an 
acknowledgment of a flattering dedication. 

The number of printers, as well as of booksellers, 
vastly increased, and their businesses extended to 
various parts of London, though Fleet Street was 
still the representative centre. The art of printing 
had declined at the beginning of the eighteenth 
century, but revived long before its close ; and 
William Bowyer, whose printing office occupied 
the former site of the George tavern, where Brad- 
bury and Agnew's large establishment now stands, 
was the man who raised the reputation of the typo- 
graphical art in England. His premises were de- 
stroyed by fire in 1712, but his friends helped him to 
rebuild, and he and his partner and successor con- 
tinued the business. His son, William Bowyer, was 



XIX.] FAMOUS PRINTERS. 445 

author as well as printer, and became a partner. 
The names of Nichols — who moved from White- 
friars to Red Lion Passage — of his son, John Bowyer 
Nichols, and of John Baskerville, occur to us as 
those of the men who restored printing to the rank 
of a fine art, while the booksellers and publishers 
became so numerous, even in Fleet Street and the 
neighbourhood, that we should have to refer to the 
eccentric Dunton's Autobiography to enumerate them 
and their peculiar personal characteristics. 

But while the publication and sale of books were 
vastly increasing in the Highway of Letters, periodical 
literature and the newspajDor press were increasing 
also — slowly at hrst, but sooii with great rapidity. 
It must be remembered that when Johnson wrote 
for the Gentleman s Magazine, and dined behind 
a screen because he was too shabby to appear before 
Cave's guest at the house at St. John's Gate, there 
were practically no newspapers such as we are familiar 
with. The information they contained was meagre. 
No reporter was allowed to take notes of the debates 
in Parliament, and Johnson, who wrote reports of the 
proceedings under the title of " Debates in the Senate 
of Lilliput," invented the speeches — that is to say, he 
knew who would be the speaker and what would be 
the subject, and Avrote accordingly, giving the member 
the benefit of his fluent and emphatic language. It 
was a breach of privilege to make known in print 
anything that transpired in Parliament, but reporters 
with accurate memories were employed, and the 
debates in an abbreviated form were printed. In 



446 THE HIGHWAY OF LHTTEES. [XIX. 

1771 Lord Onslow denounced the printers of these 
meagre reports, but Burke defended them, saying that 
as long as there was an interest out of doors to 
examine the proceedings of Parliament, so long would 
men be found to do what those men had done. 
Several London printers were summoned to the bar of 
the House. Those who appeared asked pardon on their 
knees and were discharged. Officers were despatched 
to arrest those who had not surrendered, but the 
defaulters were on the City side of Temple Bar, and 
the Parliamentary officers were themselves arrested 
and brought before the City justices for outraging 
the privileges of the City of London. Cited before 
the bar of the House of Commons, the Lord Mayor 
and Aldermen pleaded that their charter pro- 
tected the citizens from any law process being 
served on them except by their own officer. They 
were committed to the Tower, but at the end of 
the session the power of the House to imprison 
ceased. 

The release of the City dignitaries was hailed with 
a popular demonstration, their carriages were drawn 
through the streets, and the City Avas illuminated. 
While they were in the Tower the Lord Mayor and 
Aldermen had been visited by many of the political 
leaders and noblemen of the day. There was no 
longer any punishment inflicted for publication of 
debates in the House of Commons, but no actual per- 
mission was given to anyone to report the proceed- 
ings, and it was done under considerable difficulties. 
The Times and other papers of a century ago were 



XIX.] NEWSPAPERS A CENTURY AGO. 447 

still without any but the most abbreviated accounts 
of Parliamentary procedure. Even the speeches of 
the most eloquent and prominent members were not 
reported, and the account of the trial of Warren 
Hastings was but an imperfect abstract. At a Whig 
dinner the toast of the " Liberty of the Press " was 
first given in 1795, at the Crown and Anchor, the 
famous tavern for political assemblies, at the corner 
of Arundel Street, just beyond Temple Bar. Fleet 
Street was rapidly becoming the Highway of Letters 
in a new sense. Newspapers multiplied, in spite of 
the serious " taxes on knowledge " with which they 
were burdered. Till a date well within the present 
century, laws were enforced rather for the repression 
than the encouragement of journalism and the news- 
paper press. Rags, the raw material of which paper 
was made, if imported from foreign countries, had to 
bear a considerable duty. Paper itself bore a heavy 
excise duty. A tax of fourpence was placed on every 
newspaper sold. To ensure that the Treasury should 
have the first pick of any money made by newspaper 
enterprises, a duty of three-and-sixpence ivas charged 
for every advertisement, whether it occupied two 
lines or a page. The consequence was that advertise- 
ments were few, newspapers small and dear, the cir- 
culation, even among the reading class, was limited ; 
one paper did duty for a considerable circle of readers, 
and when done with in town was sent into the coun- 
try, so that ." news " there was a month old before the 
next " mail " contradicted or confirmed it. Not till 
1833, and after persistent and strenuous eftbrts, did 



448 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XIX. 

the advocates of a free press succeed in getting the 
advertisement duty reduced to one-and-sixpence. 
Three years afterwards the Government stamp on 
each paper was reduced from fourpence to a penny. 

Before that time there were but 400 newspapers 
in the United Kingdom, and only about twelve of 
them Avere published daily. There are now above 
2,200, of Avhich 470 are published in London, and 
180 are daily ncAvspajoers. Fleet Street is full of the 
representative journals of the world's daily history and 
daily interests. Along the entire length of this ancient 
and renowned thoroughfare, and in every street and 
alley branching therefrom, the names of famihar 
publications appear upon the house fronts. Not only 
London, but provincial, newspapers seem to have 
unfurled their banners outside the successive storeys. 
Except in the vast buildings occupied by the chief 
London dailies and weeklies, there is often a strange 
community of interests represented under one roof. 
Church and stage have long been identified as com- 
panions, and therefore it is less startling to see 
Divinity and the prize-ring, testhetics and poultry- 
farming, the majesty of the law and the libellous 
defiance of it, the operations of mammon and the 
claims of benevolence, romance and realism, political 
economy and philanthropy, anesthetics and athletics, 
the rights of labour and the laws of lawn tennis, 
business and bicycling, dogs and the di'ania — all repre- 
sented by golden legends, or more or less conspicuous 
inscriptions across the house fronts, or by the newly- 
printed sheets issuing from the narrow doorways. 



CHAPTER XX. 

SUCCESSORS OF DR. JOHNSON — CPIARLES LAMB. 

Carlyle's Portrait of Lamb — Brother and Sister — Hoole — '* Omniscient 
Jackson" — Benchers of the Temple — Charles and Mary Lamb in 
Cro^Ti Office Row — The School in Fetter Lane — Mr. Starkey — 
At Large in a Library — The Temple Burial Ground — Christ's 
Hospital — Coleridge — Poverty — Needlework — The Shadow of a 
Boy's Love — William and Dorothy Wordsworth — Hazlitt— The 
Lambs in Chancery Lane — In Mitre Court Buildings — Supper 
Parties — Godwin Dyer — Crabbe Robinson — Holcroft — Barry 
Cornwall — Inner Temple Lane — Mary Lamb as a Teacher and 
Adviser — Emma Isola — Haydon — Keats — Ritchie — Tom Hood — 
Keats' Lodging in Cheapside — Leigh Hunt — A Narrowing Circle 
—Edmonton -De Quincey's Estimate of Lamb — Lamb's Contri- 
bution to Newspapers — The Examiner — Leigh Hunt in Prison — 
His Visitors — Byron — Scott — Murray. 

With the death of Doctor Johnson an era in 
the World of Letters may be said to have closed, 
and after that period, as we have seen, the develop- 
ment of the periodical and newspaper press began 
to effect some change in the aspect of Fleet Street, 
where there were fewer literary residents. Even 
before the shadow of the great loss had fallen upon 
the Highway of Fleet Street, men of letters, like men 
of commerce, had made their dwellings further to- 
wards the west of London, or in the near suburbs. 

Around Whitefriars and within the Temple there 
were still representatives of literature and learning 
other than the benchers and students of the law. 
The footsteps of the members of the Kit-Kat Club 
had not ceased to sound in the great highway before 
the feet of their successors — of Hogarth, Johnson, 

D D 



450 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



[XX. 



Garrick, Burke, Goldsmitli, Reynolds, Hawkeswortk, 
Langton, Beauclerk, Richardson, Fielding, Churchill 
were heard there: and the dull rumble of the 
mourning coaches at Johnson's funeral had scarcely 
subsided when Crabbe, who years before had been 
starving in London, till he left a letter and some verses 
at Burke's door, and so roused the generous heart of 




SCREEN OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE HALL. 



that brilliant orator, came to the front rank in the 
World of Letters, though he remained in retirement 
as a country parson in the living to which Burke's 
influence had introduced him. It was to Johnson 
that Burke submitted Crabbe's early poems, and he 
selected " The Library " as the first to be published. 

Jeremy Bentham was then becoming conspicuous, 
and Cowper, the mentally afflicted recluse, who had 
been a Templar, and was known in the coffee-houses 
in Fleet vStreet, was writing the sanest and most 



XX.] A NEW GENERATION IN FLEET STREET. 451 

accurate and melodious verse, and much of it 
was strongly indicative of a mental and moral 
fibre which occasional periods of deepest depres- 
sion and melancholy aberration had not ravelled. 
Campbell was about to write the "Pleasures of 
Hope." The distant patter of gathering feet — the 
footsteps of anew generation in the World of Letters — 
was soon to be heard in Fleet Street, which was, 
as we have noted, drawing towards it, as an in- 
tellectual centre, all those who sought a place in 
the ideal Highway of Letters. The mere list of 
names of those who were, thenceforth to the present 
times, to be known therein as belonging to the ever- 
expanding Circle of Literature, would occupy more 
pages than remain to this record. 

Only a few of such frequenters of Fleet Street as 
may be said to represent the literary and journalistic 
life that surges through the Highway of Letters — 
the figures which have been most familiar there, as 
associated chiefly with the periodical literature of 
the century — can arrest our attention. 

The successor to Dr. Johnson who most intimately 
represents Fleet Street was born in the Temple ; and 
when the sage of Bolt Court died was nine years old, 
and wore the yellow coat, the buckle shoes, and 
blue gown of the scholars at Christ's Hospital. 
Then, and some time afterwards, when he had grown 
to man's estate, his crisp, curly dark hair, his striking 
aquiline features, his lustrous glittering eyes, made 
him remarkable, in spite of his frail, thin, and under- 
sized figure, just as the quality and significant wit 

D D 2 



452 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS, [XX. 

of his speech, was striking and attractive, in spite of 
hesitation and frequent stammer. 

Could there have been a stranger contrast than 
that between him and Johnson ? 

Here is a sketch of him — a rude and disparaging 
sketch by Carlyle, who was no more capable of appre- 
ciating his delicate and subtle humour and refined 
seriousness than of estimating the sentimental heart- 
hunger of a woman. "He was the leanest of man- 
kind, tiny black breeches buttoned to the knee-cap, 
and no farther, surmounting spindle legs, also in 
black; face and head fineish, black, bony, lean, and 
of a Jew type rather ; in the eyes a kind of smoky 
brightness, or confused sharpness ; spoke with a 
stutter ; in walking tottered and shuffled." 

Such is the portrait of Charles Lamb in his later 
days, as depicted by the author of " Sartor Resartus " 
and " Latter-day Pamphlets," who, in his impenetrable 
hterary arrogance, spoke of the author of the delight- 
ful, genial, quaint " Essays of Elia," as " a poor 
creature." 

Such, however, was not the opinion of Lamb's 
other contemporaries — of Coleridge, Wordsworth, 
Hazhtt, Talfourd, Southey, Leigh Hunt — nor has it 
been the estimate at which a countless nuiltitude 
of readers of Lamb's contributions to the World of 
Letters have arrived. Lamb's was an^ emotional 
nature, allied to a singular steadfastness of affection, 
shown by daily acts of tenderness, and a life of 
unselfish devotion to the sister whose love and care 
for him in his infancy he repaid by assiduous protec- 



XX.] GHABLE8 AND MABY LAMB. 453 

tion when the fits of mental aberration from which 
she periodically suffered made it necessary for him to 
undertake a charge for which he considered her gentle 
companionship and intelligent assistance in the longer 




OLD HALL OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 



intervals of sanity were an inestimable recompense. 
The story of Charles Lamb's tender devotion to his 
sister Mary, the affecting picture of those two forlorn, 
weeping creatures walking hand-in-hand across the 
fields to Islington, when the brother was obliged to 
convey his afflicted sister to the asylum in which she 
was temporarily placed, is one of the most affecting in 
the whole range of literary biography. 



454 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XX. 

Charles Lamb must have known Mr. Hoole, the 
clerk in the India-house, who was a proficient 
Italian scholar, and translated Ariosto. And he prob- 
ably also knew the yoimg clergpnan of the same 
name who sought to obtain the Readership of the 
Temple, and in whose behalf Dr. Johnson wrote to 
Mr. Richard Jackson in 1783. This is the Mr. 
Jackson who is described in Lamb's charming essay 
on the " Old Benchers of the Inner Temple." He 
was called '' Omniscient Jackson " (a sobriquet altered 
by Johnson fi'om a feeling of reverence, to '"'All- 
knowing "). 

Bentham speaks of him as " a silk gownsman, who 
had never any business, but who went by the name of 
Omniscient Jackson." Lamb, in his essay, says : — " He 
had the reputation of possessing more multifarious 
knowledge than any man of his time. He was the 
Friar Bacon of the less literate portion of the Temple. 
I remember a pleasant passage of the cook appl3'ing 
to him, with much formality of apology, for instruc- 
tions how to ^mte down edge bone of beef in his bill of 
commons. He was supposed to know, if any man in 
the world did. He decided the orthography to be as 
I have given it, justifying his authority with such 
anatomical reasons as dismissed the manciple (for the 
time) learned and happy." 

In those charming essays which Elia gave to the 
new world of letters, we are indirectly made ac- 
quainted mth the family of the author ; and his sister 
Mary Lamb, in her occasional tales and letters, added 
to the traits which make us familiar with her relatives 



XX.] BIRD' 8 SCHOOL IN FETTER LANE. 455 

under other names. In her " Mrs. Leicester's School," 
and other stories, as in her brother's essays, we come 
upon the early associations of the Lambs. Their father 
(Lovel, in the " Benchers of the Inner Temple ") had, 
after serious struggles, become clerk to Mr. Salt, one of 
the Benchers, and lived in Crown Oflfice Row, where 
Charles and Mary were born — Mary in 1764 and 
Charles in 1775. Mary was the third and Charles the 
youngest of seven children, all of whom died in in- 
fancy except these two and an elder brother John, 
who was spoiled and petted as a child, and grew up to 
be selfish, indifferent, looking to the feathering of his 
own nest, and showing little or no sympathy for the 
brother and sister who had to bear their own trials in 
a world of their own. In her early j^ears Mary went 
to a day-school in Fetter Lane, kept by a Mr. William 
Bird, where boys were taught in the morning and 
girls in the afternoon, by an elderly usher named 
Starkey ; but perhaps her real education, and by no 
means the best possible for a child with the tendency 
to mental disturbance which afterwards manifested 
itself, was desultory reading in the library of her 
father's employer, where certain books on witchcraft 
and martyrology attracted her attention, as they 
afterwards did that of her brother Charles. She must 
almost certainly have been acquainted with the ap- 
pearance of Doctor Johnson in Fleet Street, and prob- 
ably with that of Goldsmith, who died when she was 
ten years, and her little brother not quite a year, old. 
Was his grave in the burial ground of the Temple one 
of those which they visited when the little boy, 



456 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XX. 

holding his protecting sister's hand, went into the 
Temple gardens and thence to read the inscriptions 
on the old sundial and the tomb-stones, with the 
adulatory epitaphs, which set Charles wondering 
" where all the naughty people were buried ? " 

Charles, as we have seen, was sent to " the Blue- 
coat School," where Samuel Taylor Coleridge, after- 
wards his close and constant friend, was already a 
lonety, friendless, dreamy, studious boy, half starved 
on the weekly holidays, Avhen he had no one to visit, 
and so spent the time either in bathing in the New 
River or haunting old book-stalls. 

Charles Lamb left Christ's Hospital when he was 
fifteen. His father's mental faculties were failing, his 
mother was an invalid, and Mary had the burden of 
the family cares, added to the necessity for contribut- 
ing to the income by indefatigable work as a milliner. 
For eleven years she maintained herself by the needle. 
Charles obtaining a clerkship in the South Sea 
House, and two years afterwards a better one in the 
India House, added to the family resources. In 1795 
the father, incapable of continuing his employment, 
was obliged to relinquish his situation, receiving a 
small pension, and the family then removed to poor 
lodgings in Little Queen Street, Holborn. There 
Charles formed a deep attachment, of which little is 

known, except by the references to Alice W in 

his Essays, and either his untoward circumstances or 
other obstacles to his suit, so wrought on his brain that 
for six weeks his reason was impaired, and he had to 
be confined in an asylum. But he quickly recovered. 






m 



XX.] COLERIDGE— SOUTREY. 457 

and was able even, in tlie lucid intervals of that short 
period, to write some charming and accurately modu- 
lated verse to the sister who had been throughout his 
trouble his best and most faithful friend. Coleridge, 
Avho, while he was 

at Cambridge, had __ .r _''--_<. 1!;^'- . 

frequently come up JTT 
to London and 
visited the Lambs 
at the Temple, was 
now at Bristol with 
Southey, and was 
about to be married. 
He continued to 
correspond affection- 
ately with Lamb, 
who turned to him 
for comfort and 
sympathy in the 
dreadful tragedy 
following his sister 

Mary's sudden attack of frenzy. He could have had no 
better or more permanently sympathetic human 
consoler than Coleridge, and their correspondence led 
to Lamb being able soon to discuss a proposal for the 
friends to join in publishing some poems which they 
had written. 

Lamb took a lodging for his father and himself at 
Pentonville, and a delio-htful fortnig-ht's visit to 
Coleridge, who was then married, and lived at Nether 
Stowey, was the brightest incident in his life. There 




SUKDIAL IN THE TEi\lPLE. 



458 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XX. 

he met Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, who 
became his life-long friends. 

Lamb was but twenty-two, still little more than a 
boy, with curling hair, and wild, lambent eyes ; 
Wordsworth was twenty-seven, Coleridge twenty-five ; 
Wordsworth, with a solemn, stately look on his face, 
with eyes that were " fires half-smouldering, half- 
burning, inspired, supernatural, with a fixed aerial 
gaze as if he saw something in objects more than the 
outward appearance. His mouth had expression of 
an inclination to uncontrollable laughter." HazHtt 
has described him in his picturesque style, and speaks 
of his recital of one of his poems when his voice 
lingered in the ear like the roll of spent thunder. 
It is Dorothy Wordsworth who describes Coleridge 
— at that time pale, thin, with a wide mouth and thick 
lips, longish, loose-growmg, half-curling, rough, black 
hair, his eye large, full, grey, speaking every emotion 
of his animated mind ; fine dark eyebrows, and over- 
hanging forehead. 

The friendship of Coleridge and Lamb had to 
subsist on correspondence, and very little of that, 
while the author of "The Ancient Mariner" was in 
Germany, and Lamb's condition was changing. He 
grew mature, and his literary faculty was more de- 
veloped. 

After the death of his father and the recovery of 
Mary, who now had only temporary recurrences of the 
malady, he took his beloved sister home, and she soon 
began to write a little, and to help him much by her 
gentle companionship ; she, who was often sparing of 



XX.] SUPPERS AT LAMB'S LODGINGS. 459 

speech, so to speak " hung upon his Kps," and often 
repHed to him by repeating what he said. 

''You must die first, Mary." 

" Yes, Charles, I must die first," was one example 
of her brief rejoinders. Mary had now such long 
intervals of complete sanity that she and her devoted 
brother went to live in lodgings in the house of Mr. 
Gretch, an old "Blue-coat boy," in Southampton 
Buildings, Chancery Lane. It was here that Mary so 
recovered as to be able not only to write, but to visit 
literary friends, and to entertain guests, notably 
Coleridge, who was again visiting London. 

They remained only for a few months in South- 
ampton Buildings before removing to No. 16, Mitre 
Court Buildings, in the Temple. There they may be 
said to have kept open house, and at their frugal, 
plain, but attractive suppers, Godwin, George Dyer, 
Crabbe Robinson, Holcroft, Hazlitt, and a literary 
circle which included half of the best known wayfarers 
of the Highway of Letters, gathered, to talk and to listen 
to Lamb's quaint, piquant humour, which was so 
mingled with out-of-the-way knowledge that it was as 
attractive in matter as it was in manner, and Barry 
Cornwall used to say that his " pleasant little stammer 
was just enough to prevent his making speeches ; just 
enough to make you listen eagerly for his words." 

William Hazlitt, the brilliant essayist and admir- 
able critic of art, literature and the drama, lived in 
Southampton Buildings, and his wife and he were 
great friends of Mary and Charles Lamb. Hazlitt 
spoke with enthusiasm of the delight of listening to 



460 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XX. 

Charles when he could be drawn out by the friends 
who gathered round him at the plainly furnished 
rooms in Mitre Court Buildings, and there is sufficient 
testimony of the pleasure of these frugal entertain- 
ments, where bread and cheese, or in later and better 
times, a joint of mutton or "a winter hand of pork," 
was the homely fare. 

From Mitre Court the Lambs had to turn out, 
because their landlord wanted the rooms for himself 
The next residence was at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane. 
Lamb wrote to Coleridge, " I have two rooms on the 
third floor, and five rooms above, with an inner stair- 
case to myself, and all new painted, etc., for £30 a year. 
The rooms are delicious, and the best look backward 
into Hare Court, where there is a pump always going ; 
just now it is dry. Hare Court trees come in at the 
window, so that it's like living in a garden." 

There was mostly a fine flavour of wit and of 
intelligent literary conversation at Lamb's simple 
parties ; his o^m quaint vein of mingled seriousness 
and humour, which was sometimes caustic and often 
mingled with droll personal allusion, being perhaps 
the great attraction. Some of his extravagant and 
abrupt sallies of jesting were the result of his un- 
remitting" observation of his sister, and the desire to 
prevent her from entering upon topics which would 
be too emotional or too profound for her mental 
health. But she was distinguished by a beautiful calm 
of manner, and was one of the tenderest and wisest 
advisers, especially to the 3'oung, and she undertook 
the teaching of several young friends after she and 



XX. 



WOBBSWORTH. 



461 



her brother had adopted the orphaD, Emma Isola, 
who became Mrs. Moxon. There can be no doubt, 
however, that Charles Lamb had a tendency to ex- 
travagant droller}', which may have had some relation 




" goldcohth's tomb-' in 1860 Q^. -ioo). 



to an inherited tendency to insanity. He used some- 
times to attack Wordsworth ^\dth persiflage which 
the poet received with honest laughter. He knew 
well and loved well "Lamb the frolic and the 
gentle," and understood his erratic wit. Haydon, 
the painter, speaking of a dinner which he gave in 



462 THE SIGEWAY OF LETTERS. [XX. 

his studio to Wordsworth, Lamb, Keats, and Eitchie 
the traveller, says that Lamb's fun in the midst of 
Wordsworth's solemn intonation of oratory was like 
the sarcasm and art of the fool in the midst of 
Lear's passion. Reminiscences of meetings at Lamb's 
lodgings of the literary and artistic circle have 
appeared in the words of several of those w^ho formed 
a part of it ; among others Thomas Hood, who found 
himself for the first time at a door which opened to 
him as frankly as its master's heart, for without any 
preliminaries of hall, passage, or parlour, one single 
step across the threshold brought him into the 
sitting-room and in sight of the domestic hearth, a 
room which looked brown with old books, and where, 
by the fire, sat Wordsworth and his sister, Elia and 
the worthy Bridget. 

Their palaver was of the promise of the younger 
poets, Wordsworth favouring Shelley, and Charles 
Lamb supporting Keats. But there was nothing very 
striking, and as Hood says, " A poet cannot, like the 
ghl in the fairy tale, be always talking diamonds and 
pearls, though it is no uncommon impression that a 
writer sonnetises his Avife, sings odes to his children, 
talks songs and epigrams to his friends, and reviews 
his servants." Hood adds that it was something in 
this sj^irit that an official gentleman to whom he 
mentioned the pleasant Hterary meetings at Lamb's 
associated them instantly with his parochial mutual- 
instruction evening schools, and remarked " Yes, yes ; 
all very proper and praiseworthy— of course you go 
there to improve your tninds.' 



XX.] KEATS— LEIGH HUNT. 463 

It was j)i'ot)ably at this time that poor Keats, 
abeady with premonition of his early death, lodged 
on the second floor of a house stretching over a 
passage leading to the Queen's Arms Tavern, in 
Cheapside, where he wrote his sonnet on CTiapman's 
" Homer," and several of his poems. 

The mention of Shelley leads us to that close 




wiT.T.TAM WOKDSWOETH. {From the Tablet u> Grasmcrc Church.) 

friend of Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt, whose eminent 
achievements in the World of Letters extended to 
another generation, and link the story of the Highway 
of Letters, in the days, or, rather, the nights, before it 
was lighted by gas, to the present time, when some of 
them who knew him well see it illuminated by elec- 
tricity. In some of his delightful verse, Hunt records, 
with playful grace a visit from the Lambs (brother 



464 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



[XX. 



and sister), who were not only vigorous, or, at all 
events, untiring walkers, but frequently disregarded 
inclement vreattier wlien they had determined to seek 
the society of a friend. 

Born in 1784, Hunt lived till 1859. Cheerfulness, 
exercise in the open air, and moderation in eating 




THE CLOISTERS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. {Fi'Oiiia Vi CIV published in 1804.) 



and drinking, kept him not only healthy, but with 
a youthful vigour, activity, and ^dvacity which are 
conspicuous in his varied and numerous works. He 
also was a scholar at Christ's Hospital, but a little 
later than Coleridge and Lamb; and the quality 
of his own work was such as to enable him to 
appreciate the exquisite fancies of those essays of 
Elia which first appeared in The Indicator, under 
his editorship. 

Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, was amongst 



XX.] 



RECEDING FOOTSTEPS. 



465 



the later friends of Lamb, and was a frequent corres- 
pondent, and the number of theh^ acquaintances in- 
creased, so that the constant accession of visitors 
became injurious to the brother as well as to the 
sister. Their warm regard for their friends led them 
to welcome them at times when their own need of 




THE WESTERN QUADEANGLE OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, ABOUT 1780. 

repose was so urgent that to entertain company was 
a difficult and almost a dangerous indulgence. Among 
their later friends were Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Novello 
and their daughter, afterwards Mrs. Cowden Clarke, 
whose recollections of Charles and Mary Lamb are 
singularly interesting. 

From the Temple they went to lodge in Russell 
Street, taking another lodging at Dalston, but the 
change was not beneficial, for the callers kept them 
in a fever of excitement, and Lamb, though fighting 

E E 



466 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTEBS. [XX. 

against tlie craving, too frequently gave way to 
excess in gin-and-water, porter, and other liquors, 
in company of acquaintances who waylaid him 
that he might invite them to drink. 

The next move was to Colebrook Cottao-e, Islinof- 
ton, and thence, after a summer lodoino- at Enfield, 
and a temporary return to Southampton Buildings, 
in a futile effort to resume London life, they went to 
board and lodge at Edmonton with a Mr. and Mrs 
Walden, who received patients, Mary Lamb suffering 
such frequent relapses as to make such an arrange- 
ment necessary. 

The early friends were passing away. Hazlitt, 
the brilHant, gifted, slovenly essayist and artist, 
had died. The old Fleet Street circle was nar- 
rowing. Coleridge, Avith failing powers, had appa- 
rently wrenched himself free from the degrading 
indulgence in opium, and lay dying at the house of 
Mr. Gillman, the surgeon, at Highgate. His death 
was almost the last blow for Charles Lamb, who soon 
after succumbed to the effects of a fall, which appa- 
rently had caused him little injury. This was in 1834, 
only about a month after Coleridge's death. Mary sur- 
vived him for several years, with recurrent periods of 
insanity, living till 1847, and there was no one to 
succeed her brother as a resident representative of 
literature in the Highway of Letters, though some 
eminent writers have dwelt in chambers in the 
Temple. Talfourd, who became a judge, was 
known there rather as a member of the bar than 
as an author and dramatist, and one of the most 



XX.j LIBERTY OF THE FBESS. 467 

appreciative of the Mends of Elia. There were 
numerous expressions of aftection and admiration for 
the memory of the devoted brother and sincere and 
kindly Mend, whose heart was ever ready to alleviate 
distress, and whose generosity, even when he was 
struggling with poverty, was declared by de Quincey 
to have been no less than princely in its unselfish 
readiness to alleviate the necessities of others who 
appealed to him when they were in debt or difficulty. 

Lamb's connection with the newspaper press, and 
his own humorous account of the vicissitudes of 
periodicals, and of those contributors who were re- 
tained to make jokes or write paragraphs of personal 
interest, at so much a piece — ^an office which he for 
some time fulfilled — suggest some of the conditions 
of the periodicals of his time ; and we have already 
seen what even a favourable estimate of the sources 
of income of a newspaper included. It would be too 
much to say that there was no instance of complete 
*' Kberty of the Press," but it was a taxed and bur- 
dened Press, and its conditions, and the necessity for 
seeking information from political leaders, rendered a 
prominent journal peculiarly liable to be subsidised 
by the statesmen or the party by whom it was ' in- 
spired.' 

The letters of Junius, the hbels in Wilke^s Xorth 
Briton, and Cobbett's plain speaking in the Register, 
were efforts for emancipation from the thraldom of 
Government prosecution as a punishment for the 
exposure of abuses : but not suflicient distinction was 
made between outspoken censure and scandalous 
E E -2 



468 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XX. 

invective. The punishments were often severe, and 
they were tolerated, not necessarily because the state- 
ments for which they were inflicted were untrue, 
but because they were expressed in scurrilous 
language. 

It is singularly suggestive that the toast which 
afterwards became so famous — "The Liberty of the 
Press ! it is like the air we breathe, if we have it 
not we die " — was first given in 1795 at a Whig 
dinner at the Crown and Anchor tavern, which stood 
at the corner of Arundel Street, beyond Temple Bar. 
James Henry Leigh Hunt, and his brother, John, 
worked for the establishment of that liberty in their 
Exa'fYiiner, a journal which became of sufficient power 
and importance to make their attacks on the Prince 
Regent somewhat alarming, especially when they 
called him " a fat Adonis of fifty," and animadverted 
on his excesses. Two years' imprisonment and a fine 
of £500 each was the sentence pronounced on the 
intrepid proprietors, who were also the editors, and to 
prison they went. But the Exar}iiner continued to 
be published, and Leigh Hunt, in Horsemonger Lane 
Gaol, had a multitude of sympathisers, and became 
popular, while he received numerous distinguished 
visitors from the World of Letters and its Highway, 
among them — Byron, Keats, Shelley, and Moore, 
whom he entertained in his prison room, which he 
had transformed by having the wall papered with a 
pattern of roses upon a trellis, and where he had 
growing plants and flowers, beside his pictures 
and his piano. He had even converted a small, 



XX.J LEIGH HUNT'S PORTRAIT OF BYRON. 469 

sordid yard into a tiny garden, and amidst these 
triumplis of adaptation he waited the expiration of 
his sentence with cheerful equanimity and a genial 
toleration of those to whom he was opposed in 
opinion. 

The friendly relations which Hunt had long- 
sustained with Byron and Shelley, and his visit 
to them in Italy, did not prevent him from after- 
wards writing pretty plainly about the author of 
"Don Juan," of whom, in a vivid word picture, he 
said : — 



" Lord Byron's face was handsome, eminently so in some respects. 
He had a mouth and chin fit for Apollo ; and when I first knew him 
there were both lightness and energy all over his aspect. But his 
countenance did not improve with age, and there were always some 
defects in it — the jaw was too big for the upper part. It had all the 
wilfulness of a despot in it. The animal predominated over the 
intellectual part of his head, inasmuch as the face altogether was large 
in proportion to the skull. The eyes were set too near one another ; 
and the nose, though handsome in itself, had the appearance, when 
you saw it closely in front, of being grafted on the face rather than 
growing properly out of it. 

" His person was very handsome, though terminating in lameness, 
and tending to fat and effeminacy; which makes me remember. what 
a hostile fair one objected to him, namely, that he had little beard, a 
fault which, on the other hand, was thought by another lady, not 
hostile, to add to the divinity of his aspect, — imberbis Apollo. His 
lameness was only in one foot, the left ; and it was so little visible to 
casual notice, that as he lounged about a room (which he did in such 
a manner as to screen it) it was hardly perceivable. But it was a real, 
and even a sore, lameness. Much walking upon it fevered and hurt it. 
It was a shrunken foot, a little twisted. This defect unquestionably 
mortified him exceedingly, and helped to put sarcasm and misan- 
thropy into his taste of life. 

"He had a delicate white hand, of which he was proud; and he 
attracted attention to it by rings. He thought a hand of this de- 
scription almost the only mark remaining now-a-days of a gentleman, 
of which it certainly is not, nor of a lady either, hough a coarse one 



470 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTEBS. [XX. 

implies handiwork. He often appeared holding- a handkerchief, upon 
which his jewelled fingers lay embedded as in a picture. He was as 
fond of fine linen as a Quaker, and had the remnant of his hair oiled 
and trimmed with all the anxiety of a Sardanapalus. The visible 
character to which this efifeminacy gave rise appears to have indi- 
cated itself as early as his travels in the Levant, where the Grand 
Siguier is said to have taken him for a woman in disguise. 

" But he had tastes of a more masculine description. He was fond 
of swimming to the last, and used to push out to a good distance in 
the gulph of Genoa. He was also a good horseman; and he liked 
to have a gxeat dog or two about him, which is not a habit observable 
in timid men. Yet T doubt greatly whether he was a man of 
courage. I suspect that personal anxiety, coming upon a consti- 
tution unwisely treated, had no small hand in hastening his death 
in Greece. 

" The story of his bold behaviour at sea in a voyage to Sicily, and 
of Mr. Shelley's timidity, is just reversing what I conceive would 
have been the real state of the matter, had the voyage taken place. 
The account is an impudent fiction. Nevertheless, he volunteered 
voyages by sea, when he might have eschewed them ; and yet the 
same man never got into a coach without being afraid. In short, he 
was the contradiction his father and mother had made him. To lump 
together some more of his personal habits, in the style of old Aubrey, 
he sjDelt a:ffectedly, swore somewhat, had the jSTorthumbrian burr in 
his speech, did not like to see women eat, and would merrily say that 
he had another reason for not liking to dine with them — which w'as, 
that they always had the wings of the chicken." 



Byron and Sir Walter Scott were often enough in 
Fleet Street (as, in fact, every wayfarer in tlie London 
World of Letters is bound to resort thittier at one time 
or otlier) ; but it does not appear that they first met 
at Mr. Murray's, the pubhshers, in the shop and re- 
ception room over the entrance to Falcon Court, but 
in the grander and more luxuriously furnished salon 
of the premises to Avhich, in 1812, the famous pub- 
lishers removed, in Albemarle Street. For more than 
a century the house of Murray has been famous, and 
its third representative, who died but recently, in his 



XX.] 



MURRAY'S REGOLLEGTIONS. 



471 



eighty-fourth year, had long before written his remi- 
niscences, in which he says : — 

" I can recollect seeing Lord Byron in Albemarle Street. He 
wore many rings on Ms fingers and a brooch in his shirt-front, 
which was embroidered. When he called he used to be dressed in a 
black dress-coat (as we should now call it), with grey, and sometimes 
nankeen, trousers, his shirt open at the neck. Lord Byron's deformity 
in his foot was very evident, especially as he walked downstairs. 
After Scott and he had ended their conversation in the drawing-room, 
it was a curious sight to see the two greatest poets of the age — both 
lame — stumping downstairs side by side." 




WIG SHOP IN THE MIDDLE TEMPLE. 



CHAPTER XXL 

A TRANSITION IN THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 

Scurrilous Papers — The Age — The Satirist — Westmacott — Gregory — 
The To i6;e— "Baron" Nicholson— The John Bull— Theodore 
Hook — Ingoldshy — Rogers — Second Editions — The Courier — 
Charles Knight — His Epitaph by Jerrold — Charles Dickens — 
" Pickwick " — " Oliver Twist " — Changing Aspects of London — 
Household Words — Punch — Mark Lemon — The Shakspeare's Head 
—The Mayhews— The Funch Staff —Leech— Albert Smith— 
Maginn — The New Timon — Tennyson versus Bulwer Lytton, in 
Funch — Thackeray— Gus Mayhew's Introduction to the Illustrated 
London News — Douglas Jerrold — Lloyd'' s Weekly Newspaper — The 
" Train-band " —Mr. G. A. Sala— The Savage C\uh—Fun and its 
Staff — Tom Robertson— Henry S.Leigh — Henry Byron — William 
Jeffery Prowse — ^W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan — Mr. 
Clement Scott — Mr. J. Ashby-Sterry — John Crawford Wilson 
and the White Friars — The Golden Highway. 

There were yet no newspapers, even in the second 
decade of tlie present century, to compare in circu- 
lation with the least of the present dailies published 
in Fleet Street ; but there were scurrilous prints, 
which in indecency and defamation exceeded the 
worst modern rag, and though not more mischievous 
socially than the modern so-called Society journals, 
which print personalities mostly supplied by the 
intimate acquaintances of the persons victimised, 
they were notorious for exacting blackmail. The Age, 
under the direction of Charles Molloy Westmacott, 
and the Satirist, under that of the unscrupulous 
Barnard Gregory, will still be remembered by some 
people now in the evening of life. They were suc- 
ceeded by TJte Toivn, under the direction of the 
so-called " Baron " Nicholson, a talented man, who 



XXL] THEODORE HOOK— BARS AM— ROGERS. 473 

having studied for the bar, conducted a disreputable 
entertainment called " a Judge and Jury," consisting 
of a series of inock trials, ribald travesties of 
the procedure of a court of justice, which was held at 
a tavern in an alley in the Strand. Among the dis- 
reputable journals must also be named the John 
Bull of that day, a newspaper expressly started for 
traducing, slandering, and ridiculing the indiscreet 
and unhappy Queen Caroline. To conduct this 
unsavoury work Theodore Hook was engaged, but 
the actual proprietorship of the paper was a mystery 
which has not been solved. If the burly, black- 
whiskered humorist knew it, he never divulged the 
secret ; and though during the first years of its 
existence the printers and registered proprietors were 
fined and imprisoned for hbel, the pubhcation con- 
tinued. This increased the success of the paper, 
which from the first had received the support of 
numbers of unknown persons becoming subscribers; 
and the journal, the price of which was seven- 
]Dence, reached the then extraordinary' circulation of 
12,000 copies weekly. The John Bull, notwithstanding 
its degrading intentions, was ably conducted, and 
often teemed with wit and literary excellence. 

The Rev. Mr. Barham (Thomas Ingoldsby, of the 
Ingoldsby Legends, and a close fi'iend of Hook) was 
one of the contributors, and with his queer, humor- 
ous face and lame foot, was often in Fleet Street, 
as he lived at the Chapter House of Saint Paul's. 
Samuel Rogers, the poet and banker, who lived far 
into the century, for he died in 1855, at the ao-e of 



474 ^HE BIGBWAY OP LETTERS. [XXI. 

ninety, contributed verses to it, which, were not in the 
least political. He was the greatest anecdotist and 
roost amusing witty story teller of his time, and 
his table talk and letters are still bright enough 
to set up a dozen raconteurs for a lifetime, for he 
reduced his stories, as he did his poems, to the 
highest degree of polish, so that no superfluous 
Avord or feeble periphrasis should diminish their 
effect. 

Thomas Haynes Bayly was another contributor 
to John Bull, and James Smith, one of the authors 
of the "Eejected Addresses," was supposed to write 
for it, but warmly denied ever having sent a hne 
to the paper, which was tabooed in some aristocratic 
circles where he was a visitor, and notably by the 
Countess of Jersey, the president of Almack's, who 
declared that she would exclude from her brilliant 
receptions anyone who was connected with it. 

The brilliant and talented William Maginn also 
Avrote for John Bull, but only as a free lance, and just 
as he Avrote for other magazines and neAvspapers. 
The circulation of the paper fell off after the death 
of Queen Caroline, and the profits of £4,000 a year, 
of Avhich Hook got half, AA^ere so reduced that he Avas 
reduced also, and on his retirement the John Bull 
became a High Church Tory paper, and at a later 
date a journal Avith a reputation for containing 
accurate and ample ecclesiastical information. 

Poor Maginn became an assistant editor of the 
Standard, then an evening paper only, under the 
direction of Doctor Giftard, the father of the recent 



XXI.] HOOK'8 STYLE OF WIT. 4'75 

Lord Chancellor, Lord Halsbuiy, and of Mr. Harry 
Giffard, one of the Registrars of the Bankruptcy 
Court. 

The varied talents of the accomplished Dr. Maginn, 
who was learned with the wise and witty in the 
society of wits, were acknoAvledged by the Tories, 
whose cause he supported, by admirable compliments, 
but he receiyed no very substantial reward for his 
brilliant services, and his habits of intemperance, no 
less than his generosity, kept him poor. Worse still, 
he was of delicate constitution, and the life he led 
hastened the fatal effects of the consumptive tendency 
from which he suffered. After being for some time 
in prison for debt, he was released only to die, in 1841, 
at Walton- on-Thames, at the comparatively early age 
of forty-nine. 

Theodore Hook is remembered for one or two 
novels, especially that of "Jack Bragg," and for the 
traditions of his amusing powers as a Avit and an 
improvisatore, but still more for the extravagant 
practical jokes of which he was the master and 
perpetrator. One of his sayings about Rogers has 
been preserved. The countenance of the older poet 
had become colourless and cadaverous as he advanced 
in life, and was so remarkable in this respect that 
B3a'on, in one of his quarrelsome moods, had written 
some mahgnant lines about it. Rogers Avas greatly 
hurt, and for some time they kept apart, but Avere 
afterAA^ards reconciled. Theodore Hook adA'ised the 
friends of Rogers to induce him not to attend Byi-on's 
funeral, as he Avould stand in danger of beino- recoo-- 



476 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XXI. 

nised by tlie undertaker as a corpse he had screwed 
down some six weeks before. 

To return to the development of the newspaper 
press, it may be mentioned that in the first quarter 
of the present century there were no repeated editions 
of daily papers. 

The Courier, an evening paper which changed its 
politics two or three times, and was published near 
the stage entrance of the Lyceum theatre about 
seventy years ago, was said to be the first which 
brought out successive editions. As " flying " news- 
vendors, who blew post horns and shouted the latest 
intelligence, were employed to disseminate the evening 
papers, the streets in that locality, and those further 
afield, resounded with stentorian shouts of sensational 
events, in editions appearing within a few minutes of 
each other. 

A writer in All The Year Round, in 1865, records 
that any scrap of news sufficed to make an edition. 
A friend of his father remembered that when 
BelKngham shot Mr. Perceval, the Courier published 
edition after edition from the moment of the mur- 
derer's arrest to that of his execution, chronicling 
the prisoner's demeanour in Newgate. The last line 
of important news one evening was — 

"Fourth Edition. Courier Office, 10 min. past 6. 
The villain refuses to be shaved ! " 

Among the names of the pioneers of what has long 
been known as popular instructive literature, that of 
Charles Knight, the famous printer and pubHsher in 
Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street, holds a prominent, if 



XXI.] CHARLES KNIGHT— JEEEOLB. 477 

not the very first place. His Penny Magazine and 
Penny Cyclopcedia were regarded with astonishment, 
as marvellous contributions to those cheap and 
excellent pubHcations by which he sought to promote 
popular education and the pro^dsion of pure enter- 
taining Uterature. His literary attainments enabled 
him to edit and contribute to some of the best of the 
works which he pubhshed, and he gathered about 
him a number of men, of whom Macaulay in his early 
days was one, and Leigh Hunt another, whose abilities 
were enlisted in the production of works — notably, the 
magnificent editions of Shakespeare — which were 
issued by this worthy, simple-minded, and indefatig- 
able representative of the spiritual, as well as of the 
material, Highway of Letters. He lived to within a 
comparatively recent period, one of the bookiest men, 
in the best sense, who ever walked and ^\Tought in 
Fleet Street ; and those who know him only by reputa- 
tion, as well as many who remember his active figure 
and frank, bright, intelligent face, will concur in the 
instantaneous reply of Douglas Jerrold, of whose wit 
Knight was a constant admirer, when they met at a 
Club to which they both belonged. "Jerrold," said 
the famous publisher, one evening, " I am growing- 
very old and I wish you would write my epitaph." 

" It is done, my dear fellow," was the reply. 
" Here it is. ' Good (K)night.' " 

The mere mention of some of the men who at that 
period were among the habitues of Fleet Street, 
suggests that several of them lived and worked 
under both the old and the new literary dispensation. 



478 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XXI. 

One of the latest of these was the young Avriter 
who was, so to speak, the foremost representative 
in the World of Letters of a transitional period in 
which manners and customs were underofoingf a 
complete alteration, and even the people and the. 
places associated mth the stor}^ of London highways 
and their traditions were passing away. 

Charles Dickens, who was brought to London, 
while he was yet a child, from the suburb of 
Chatham, where his family had lived in straitened 
circumstances, became acquainted with aspects of 
life which he would not so keenly have appreciated 
but for the vicissitudes of his boyhood. He came 
with powers of imagination and faculty of characteri- 
sation heightened by the early perusal of the 
stories of masters of fiction — of Goldsmith, Fieldinof, 
Smollett, and other Avriters of a previous generation — 
and in his childish leisure Uved amidst the persons 
and in the localities which they made real to him. But 
his own vivid imagination and wondrous faculty 
of subtle observation and graphic delineation 
so rapidly developed, that he himself became a 
master at an age when his amazing ability excited 
the wonder and admiration of his older contempo- 
raries, and of a vast multitude of readers of all 
classes. Numbers of these were familiar with the 
scenes and the personages which this youth, Yv^ho 
had scarcely reached man's estate, presented to 
them with such vivid and yet easy, rollicking- 
humour that the whole town, and then the whole 
country, and, indeed, half the countries in the world, 



XXI.] CEAIiLES DICKENS. 479 

were infected by it, and " Pickwick " became an al- 
most miiversal note of hilarity and good-fellowship. 

It was, perhaps, fortunate for Dickens that his first 
work was, by circumstances, necessarily directed to 
descriptions of characters and social conditions 
Avhich were passing away, but had not disappeared. 

The " Pickwick Papers " stood, and still stands, as 
a faithful, if accentuated, record of the time just before 
stage-coaches were superseded by railways and road- 
side inns by hotels, and when the multifarious aspects 
of life in the great metropohs were slowly, but surely, 
changing like a dissolving view, which gives place little 
by little to the transformations that obliterate it. 

Charles Dickens, the youth whose experiences 
have been told by his friend and biographer, Mr. John 
Forster, who had succeeded .to the editorship of the 
Examiner after the Hunts had relinquished it to 
another proprietor, was not unknown in the World of 
Letters at the time that he took chambers in Fur- 
nivals Inn, and began his first great work. He 
had laboriously taught himself shorthand, and had 
been a reporter for the True Sun, and thence went in 
a similar capacity to the Morning Chronicle, to which 
he contributed the " sketches " which were afterwards 
published under his early nom de jjliime, as "Sketches 
by Boz." "Pickwick" took the town by storm, and 
" Oliver Twist " appeared when he undertook what 
proved to be a brief editorship of Bentleys Miscellany. 
Distinguished friends began to gather round him. 
Fleet Street echoed his name. His presence was 
noticed in assemblies to which he was invited, and 



480 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XXI. 

the intensity and vivid expression of his handsome, 
youthful face made him remarkable in any company. 

Even Carlyle succumbed to Pickwick, and 
was it not Mrs. Carlyle who said that his radiant 
countenance at once attracted and arrested at- 
tention ; that it was " like a face of steel " ? 




THOMAS CAELYLE. {From tlie Medallion by Boehm.) 

Whatever it expressed was not more radiant, intense, 
and full of individuality than his work was. For 
years he introduced to a vast reading public scenes 
of pathos, wit, and humour, the reality of which 
stirred the emotions and strengthened social and 
domestic sentiments. Year after year he introduced 
to the reading world not mere characters, but men, 
women, and children, in whose real existence both he 
(writing with sympathetic exaltation) and his ad- 



XXI.] THE GALAXY BOUND DICKENS. 481 

mirers, recognising the force and natural congruity 
even of the more extravagant of them, came to 
beHeve. For fifty years the characters in the novels 
of Charles Dickens have been spoken of as real living 
persons, and their sayings and doings quoted, to 
illustrate essays, leading articles and descriptions in 
almost every form of publication. 

It was no wonder that Dickens sometimes dis- 
played, perhaps insensibly, a somewhat self-conscious 
and patronising air. What must have been the effect 
on any man's mind to read the new chapters of his 
books to an audience such as that which met at 
Forster's chambers or elsewhere to listen to him, not 
often without some display of strong emotion, either 
in laughter or tears ? Forster, Mulready, Jerrold, 
Carlyle, Thackeray, Macready — the leading men in 
the World of Letters — were at one time or other eager 
to listen to the latest achievement of his imagination, 
for he put into his reading the sense of reality which 
had aroused his deepest emotions in writing. 

Like Richardson he seemed not to be able to go 
on writing happily without an occasional audience. 
There was much, not only of the dramatist, but of 
the actor, in his mental constitution, and it is on 
record that he could not be easy while he was in Italy 
without once coming all the way to London to read 
one of his Christmas books, or a part of it, which he 
had just finished. 

That he is associated with the Highway of Letters 
goes without saying, and though after he had accepted 
and soon relinquished the editorship of the Daily 

F F 



482 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTEBS. [XXI. 

Xeius, he seldom contributed to any periodical till he 
established '' Household Words/' his face and figure 
were associated, not alone with Fleet Street, nor 
with the highways of London, but with its curious 
nooks and comers and obscure byways. For who 
has depicted them as he did : who, having met him 
in one of his frequent peregrinations, could forget 
that intense, penetrating look, that wonderful eye, 
which seemed not only to see, but to grasp the face or 
the object to which he directed his attention, and by 
some subtle, marvellous process to photograph it on his 
memory for future development. As an example of 
Dickens's picturesque description, as aj)plied to Fleet 
Street, we may refer to his quaint delineation, in " A 
Tale of Two Cities," of "Telson's" Bank by Temple Bar, 
which for quiet humour is equal to anything he ever 
wrote, as the story itseh is, in the opinion of competent 
judges, the most truly artistic work he ever achieved. 
Though parliamentary reporting for the principal 
newspapers had long been recognised when Dickens 
wrote for the Chronicle, the work of the special 
reporter was difficult and even hazardous, for he had 
to make joumej^s to remote country places in any con- 
veyance which he could secure : and Diclvcns once, in 
an admirable speech, described his early experiences 
in reporting as having been associated with journeys 
on every kind of road by every kind of vehicle 
taldng notes at a meeting in a held in a torrent 
of rain, his note-book shielded with a pocket-hand- 
kerchief by a friend, and the return journey being 
made in a post-chaise, in which he endeavoured 



XXI.'_ XEWSFAFEE EEPOBTEES. 483 

to traiiscribe his notes by the light fi-om a stable 
lanteriL The nish of coaches m Fleet Street after 
an important provincial meeting frequently blocked 
the highway and caused a congestion at Shoe Lane, 
as the reporters strove who shotild be earliest with 
a foil note of the speeches. 

The establishmen: oi Pu.i\^:]l in the Highway of 
Letters, above fifty years ago, was an event of some 
importance, and yet several contradictory accounts 
of the fotmdation of the leading comic journal 
have appeared. Even the present staff under their 
able editor seem to have been singularly ill-informed 
on the subject of the first contribtitors : and 
several versions of the original choice of the title 
have been put forward. It is certain that several 
attempts to establish a weekly comic jotimal had 
been made, that the London Figaro, and even 
Punch, had appeared in combination with other 
titles, and that Douglas Jerrold had been associated 
with more than one of the attempts. There can be 
little doubt, either, that the notion of starting a new 
comic paper was mooted and partly formulated at the 
Shakespeare's Head, a tavern in AVych Street, where 
Mr. Mark Lemon was the *• landlord," or proprietor, 
and that he became the first editor, and retained 
that position tmtil his death at Crawley, in Sussex, 
in 1870. Thirdly, there is no dotibt that the principal 
literary originator was Henrs* ^layhew, eldest of the 
brothers Mayhew, of whom Hemy-, Horace, and 
Augusttis were best kno^\tQ in the Highway of 
Letters. Mr. Last, a printer in Crane Couit, was 

F F -2 



484 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XXI. 

one of the first persons applied to, and reference 
was made to Mark Lemon as a man not only 
Avittj himself, but the cause of wit in others who 
met at his well-known tavern. He was also cajDable 
of doing good service in suggesting a competent 
staff of contributors. The names of Douglas Jerrold, 
Henry Mayhew, Stirhng Coyne, Gilbert a Beckett, 
"W. H. Wills, and H. E. Grattan a^^peared on the 
hterary staff. Mr. Ebenezer Landells was appomted 
as engraver, and Messrs. Henning, Xewman, Hine, and 
PhiUips, artists. The prospectus was di-awn by Mr. 
Mark Lemon, and TJte London Charivari was sug- 
gested as a second title. The acquisition of Mr. Perci- 
val Leigh afterwards brought in his friend, John Leech, 
the caricaturist, a veritable frequenter of Fleet Street, 
for he was born in the Old London Coffee-house 
on Ludgate Hill, which was kept by his father, and 
was once famous for its punch and as the place to 
which jurors were sent during a trial. Leech, in turn, 
brought in Albert Smith, one of the most rattling and 
versatile writers on social comic subjects, afterwards 
the author of two or three excellent novels, and 
finally the famous entertainer of large audiences who 
went to the Eg^qDtian Hall, Piccadilly, to laugh at his 
charming humorous lectures and panoramas of " The 
Ascent of Mont Blanc '' and '•' The Overland Route."' 
^* The new publication Avas full of genial fun and 
refined humour, and it became a success as far as the 
appreciation of the public was concerned ; but the 
sale did not cover the expenses, and it was taken 
over by Messrs. Bradbury and Evans. Some of its 



XXL] '' punch:' 485 

artists and contributors left, among them Mr. Landells 
and Mr. Henry Mayliew; but there were some 
accessions, the most important being that of Mr. 
Horace Mayhew, who had just returned from Ger- 




STREET FHONT OF THE FLEET PRISON. 



many, and was known to his friends as " Ponny " 
Mayhew — a man of infinite jest, graceful humour, 
and quiet, conciliatory manners. 

Among the contributors was the erratic Doctor 
Maginn (the " Captain Shandon "of Thackeray), who 
composed the first Punch's Almanac while he was in 
the Fleet Prison, which was soon to be pulled down, 
never to be rebuilt. The name of Thackeray adds 
another to the long list of those who almost daily 
assembled in the Highway of Letters, and he, Gilbert a 
Beckett, Jerrold, Albert Smith and Leech, were the 
principal supporters of the paper. 



486 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTEES. [XXI. 

There were occasional tiffs, as wlien diaries Louis 
Napoleon was likely to be elected Emperor, and a 
consultation was held as to the tone Punch should 
take. One of the coterie said it would be best to 
be indefinite. " Oh ! " retorted a Beckett, " if you're 
not definite you'd better be dumb in it." 

There were so many opportunities for Punch's 
cudgel outside, however, that internal bickerings 
were few. Alfred Tennyson was a contributor only 
once, in a retort upon " The New Timon," in which 
Bulwer Lytton had attacked the coming laureate. 

That retort was not lacking in vigorous persona- 
lities, supposed to be uttered by the old Timon 
against the appropriator of his name and title, to 
whom the rugged old satirist refers as "the man 
who wears the stays," and " who shakes a mane 
en pajDillotes." Timon ends by crying " Off bandbox ! " 
This was strong enough, but the " mane en jxqnllotes " 
was supposed to have done the business. 

Henry Mayhew and his brother Augustus were 
well known in Fleet Street, long after the secession 
from Punch, and "the brothers Mayhew" were 
engaged in issuing several amusing brochures, which 
were at the time extremely popular, while the ex- 
haustive work on "London Labour and the London 
Poor," of which Henry was the projector, and in 
which he was assisted by able colleagues, greatly 
added to the reputation he had achieved by a busy 
literary career ; and it was followed by a volume 
on "The Criminal Prisons of London." Augustus, 
whose genial manners and portly presence were 



XXI] ''GUS'' MAYHEW. 487 

familiar to the journalistic world of that time, was 
very much in evidence at most of the literary 
rendezvous. A story was told of the occasion of 
his joining the staff of contributors to the Illustrated 
London News, which it would noAv be difficult to 
YGYiij. A small coterie — of which the founder of 
the great illustrated paper, Mr. Herbert Ingram, 
Mr. Brough, the father of the brothers Brough, 
and one or two others, were members — used to meet 
in the quaint old coffee-room of the Cheshire Cheese, 
and there they formed a club, to which they gave 
the title of " The Wits," for no reason that was ever 
discovered. One afternoon they were discoursing on 
astronomy, and one of the party observed that it 
was a wonderful reflection, that the sun was a 
million miles distant from the earth. Upon which 
a quiet, but potential-looking young man who, 
with a friend, was seated in a corner of the room 
ventured, with apologies for interposmg in the con- 
versation, to remark that the distance was ninety- 
five milHons of miles. Such a stupendous statement 
required to be verified, and a messenger was sent 
to the office of The JSfeius for a book on Astronomy, 
upon reference to which, the astonished members 
of the AVits' Club found that the stranger was 
justified in his correction. Having inquired his 
name, .the proprietor of the then recently-estab- 
lished paper exclaimed, " Sir, you are a man of 
genius, why don't you ^vrite for the Illustrated 
London Neivs .? " 

Another anecdote about "Gus," as he was affec- 



488 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XXI. 

tionately called, relates tliat on one of the occasions 
when both he and Henry were m pecuniary diffi- 
culties, and liable to arrest, the latter retired to a 
house in the country, and prepared for a state of 
siege against the sheri£t''s officers, who were pre- 
sently seen prowling about the premises. With the 
amiable intention of bearing his brother company, 
Gus went down and contrived to gain admission, but 
as provisions ran short, devised a scheme for taking 
the bailiffs off while Henry made his escape. With 
this purpose he gaily went out for a walk, chuckling 
to observe that he was followed by the " myrmidons 
of the law," and after leading them for a considerable 
distance suffered them to overtake him. 

'' Mr. Mayhew ? " said the principal officer. 

" Oh dear, yes," was the reply, in tones of the most 
polished politeness, " but I am not Mr. Henry Mayhew. 
I am Mr. Augustus Mayhew." 

" All right, sir. It's Mr. Augustus Mayhew as we 
want," said the official, and thereupon arrested him 
and conveyed him to London. 

In 1852 Douglas Jerrold undertook the editorship 
of that still famous weekly, entitled Lloyd's Weekly 
Neiospaper, the first of the penny papers. Ten 
years before, it had been started by its courageous, 
energetic and cheery proprietor, Mr. Edward Lloyd, 
in a shop in Shoreditch, and in the following year 
had been enlarged to twelve pages and removed to 
offices in Salisbury Square. Though its price then 
was threepence, Mr. Lloyd found it a severe task 
to fight against the stamp duty, but in July, 1853, 



XXI. 



DOUGLAS .IE BR OLD. 



489 



that duty was abolished, and the price was reduced to 
twopence. In 1861 the paper duty was abohshed, 
and Lloyd's had been already reduced to a penny, in 
anticipation. Under Jerrold's editorship it prospered 




^*^ V^ -- ®' lit' ^ 



T\-l>«-E OFPICE COURT A>-D THE "CHESHIRE CHEESE. " 



greatly, and at his death, in accordance with a 
promise made to him by Mr. Llo3'd, his son, William 
Blanchard Jerrold, was appointed to sticceed him. 

At a comparatively recent date the late en- 
terprising proprietor, then a man of large means 



490 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XXI. 

purcliased the paper called the Glerhemvell News, once 
famous because of its profitable S3^stem of inserting 
small and cheap advertisements, and included it in 
a scheme for issuing a morning newspaper in the 
Liberal interest, entitled the Daily Chronicle, and 
now one of the most successful of the daily papers, 
all of which, except the Times, have reduced their 
price to a penny. The circulation of LloycVs Weekly 
Newspai^er is phenomenal, even in these days of 
large issues, its output approaching, if it does not 
exceed, three-quarters of a million. 

In 1856 a few of the young rising authors who 
met in the Highway of Letters and elsewhere joined 
in starting a magazine called The Train, under the 
editorship of Mr. Edmund Yates, who then held an 
appointment in the Post Office and was one of the 
liveliest of journalists. 

The staff of contributors, known among them- 
selves as the " train-band," included Robert and 
William Brough, both known as successful writers 
of farces, burlesques, and extravaganzas, and the 
former as a poet of great ability ; their brother, 
John Cargill Brough, a scientist and one of the 
most amiable and trustworthy friends and comrades 
to be found in the Highway of Letters ; Edward 
Draper, a friend of Albert Smith and his coUabo- 
rateur in The Man in the Moon, a little square, 
dumpy magazine, replete with genuine humour and 
innocent fun ; Godfrey Wordsworth Turner, whose 
recent death has been a loss to the lovers of a style 
singularly pure and attractive ; James Hain Friswell, 



XXI.] THE ''TBAIN-BANDr 491 

the author of " The. Gentle Life " ; Sutheiiand Edwards, 
whose contributions to current journalism— no less 
than his books — have lost none of their charra ; Lewis 
Carroll, the parent of " Alice in Wonderland " ; John 
Hollingshead, AV. Mo}^ Thomas, William P. Hale, and, 
not to mention others, Georo-e Auo-ustus Sala, who, if 
one may be excused for saying so, has so long been 
a representative of the whole circle of journahsm 
in the Highway of Letters, that it would be no more 
than a fittino^ recoofnition if a comfortable mansion 
were built for his residence in some pleasant space m 
Fleet Street made vacant for the purpose by the 
City Corporation. 

The "train band" carried on then work with 
abundant applause and increasing reputation till four 
volumes of the magazine were completed, but the lack 
of commercial experience prevented the speculation 
from becoming remunerative, and except the excite- 
ment of a glorious contest with a rival magazine, 
edited by James Hannay, who afterwards secured the 
post of British Consul at Barcelona, gained little but 
the advantage of having formed a compact literary 
association, which, though somewhat Bohemian in its 
characteristics, had made a mark in the Highway of 
Letters, and met again in happy camaraderie as con- 
tributors to other periodicals, notably The ^Yelcome 
Guest, a magazine which ran for a considerable time, 
and was at one period of its existence edited by Robert 
Brough. 

The establishment of Household Words by Charles 
Dickens in 1859, and its later conversion into All the 



492 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XXI. 

Year Round, had given a fresh, interest to the World of 
Headers, and the institution of the SavageX'lub, which 
held some of the best of its early meetings in a barely 
furnished back room, lighted by a dingy slqdight, on 
the first floor of the Lyceum Tavern, was another 
event indirectly associated mth the Highway of 
Letters. Fresh contributors had joined the staff of 
Punch, Thackeray was among the wa3rfarers in Fleet 
Street, the "Snob Papers" and "Jeames's Diary" 
were moving the town to inextinguishable laughter ; 
but Mark Lemon was succeeded as editor by Mr. Tom 
Taylor, and he by Mr. Shirley Brooks, and the flavour 
of the wit was then somewhat altered. It became 
rather too superfine for a large circle of ordinary 
readers; and some of the younger humorists who 
found it had become exclusive, preferred to support a 
rival entitled Fun, which was started in Fleet Street, 
the proprietor being a Mr. Maclean, a looking-glass 
and picture-frame maker, who also initiated a 
periodical called Saturday Night. Mr. Francis 
Cowley Burnand, already known to fame as a 
humorous dramatist, had a hand in both publi- 
cations ; but the editorship of Fun devolved upon 
Tom Hood, the son of the famous author of "The 
Song of the Shirt," which had appeared first in 
Punch. Tom Hood, not long from Oxford, but 
already with a reputation in literature, and especially 
in comic Hterature, and a knack of making humorous 
sketches, had for some time been on the look-out for 
the editorship of a comic journal. His tall, graceful 
figure and dark, handsome face were already con- 



XXL] ''FUW 493 

spicuous in the Highway of Letters ; his affectionate, 
gentle, almost womanly disposition endeared him to a 
number of friends ready to enlist under his banner, 
and his shout of triumph as he leaned half-way out of 
a hansom to greet a friend who saw him coming 
through Covent Garden, was that of a boy, as waving 
his umbrella, he announced that he had "got a 
comic," adding, " I shall want you" 

What weekly dinners used to be held at " Carr's," 
by the corner of Dane's Inn, when Matt Morgan was 
the Fun " cartoonist " ! 

"What a merry and appreciative company used to 
meet in the dingy editorial room at the back of the 
pubHshing office in Fleet Street ! What comrades 
they were, that contingent in the Highway of Letters ! 
Alas ! the pen may well falter before their names are 
written, the tongue may sorrowfully fail to speak of 
them in a voice louder than a sigh. So few are left 
to answer, should the muster roll be called. The 
genial editor himself died when he should have been 
in his prime. Tom Robertson, to whom fortune came 
too late^though his sparkling comedies held the 
stage of the theatre, where all London and half the 
provinces went to laugh and cry at Caste and 
Ours and the tender mirth of School. He left 
Tom Hood and another of the Fun brotherhood to 
be his executors and guardians to his children, for 
they could some way interpret his bitter jibes and 
turn the current of his sometimes reckless talk, 
knowing what a reserve of human kindliness lay 
nearest to his heart. Wilham Kingston Saw}^er, true 



494 TITE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XXI. 

and dear friend, with kindling smile and ready liand 
to encourage and to help those who sought his aid. 
His philosophy was to cultivate cheerfulness, his 
religion to be and to do good, and children loved 
him, for he was a child himself among them. Henry 
S. Leigh, the writer of quaint and tuneful songs, of 
carols of Cockaigne, which he would consent to sing 
to friends when he was not talking metaphysics, 
remembered from the conversations of his father with 
the visitors at his art school. Henry Byron, whose 
fame as a writer of comedies is still green, and who 
first saw the merit of Robertson's dramas, and put 
them on the stage at the Prince of Wales's Theatre 
when he and Marie Wilton (Mrs. Bancroft) were 
lessees, and John Hare was rising in the public regard 
as an actor of subtle faculty, with that suppressed 
force and artful naturalness which are the marks not 
only of genius, but of unsparing study. William 
Jeffery Browse, the young writer whose genius com- 
passed the whole round of literary expression, and 
could, with equal ease and completeness, write an in- 
stalment of " Nicholas' Sporting Notes " for Fitn, an 
earnest leading article for the Daily Telegraph, a poem 
fragrant with simple metaphor from flower and field, 
or a story strong in incident and natural emotion. 
Alas ! like Keats, his mother's earty friend, he died 
too young, and before his strength was set, for, like 
Keats, he suffered from a tendency to consumption, 
which led to his being obliged to seek a more genial 
climate at Mentone, whence came the sad news of his 
death. Some of the members of this little company 



XXI.] PROWSE—GILBEE T—S ULLIVAN. 495 

in the Highway of Letters joined in the production of 
Christmas books, consisting of a continuous story, 
or set of stories threaded, as it were, on one string 
of plot, an effort in which their frequent exchange 
of ideas in relation to a common centre of interest 
enabled them to succeed when other attempts of 
a similar kind have failed. The collaborators in 
these Christmas volumes were Tom Hood, Jeftery 
Prowse, Tom Eobertson, Wilham Schwenk Gilbert, 
who wrote the Bab Ballads for F-mi, Clement Scott, 
and another writer who had achieved some reputation 
for sketches of character and stories, both humorous 
and pathetic. 

Mr. Gilbert has, perhaps, crowned the edifice of 
his ambition by the continued and deserved success 
of his comic operas, some of them elaborated from 
the original Bab Ballads, which, at all events, give the 
keynote of his quaint and attractive extravagances. 
He is no longer a frequenter of the Highway of 
Letters, in the sense of haunting Fleet Street. 
Perhaps he had enough of it when he was in 
chambers, and, having been called to the bar, had 
to divide his time between reading proofs and reading 
briefs ; but he can scarcely have forgotten the old 
da3^s of Rates and Taxes, A Bunch of Keys, and 
The Five Alls. 

Sir Arthur Sullivan, too, was among the band of 
busy contributors to current literature who met in 
the little editorial room behind the publisher's shop. 
He Avas not Sir Arthur then, and had not yet 
overtaken the well-merited fame which, as Arthur 



496 TEE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XXI. 

SketcUey would have said, Avas "layin' in ambush 
for him, unbeknown." 

Mr. Clement Scott, in addition to his labours as a 
dramatic critic, has done suit and service in general 
literature, and occasional stirring verse, and has 
recently concerned himself in the preparation of the 
reminiscences of the late Mr. Edward Laman Blanch- 
ard, one of the best-known and best-loved way- 
farers in the Highway of Letters for more than half a 
century, a truly universal journalist, who sounded the 
whole gamut of hterature. 

Mr. J. Ashby-Sterry, too (one of the loyal friends 
and companions of the Fun circle), was once assidu- 
ous in his attendance in Fleet Street, but that 
was when he had chambers in the Temple, full of 
portentous carved furniture and with a wide fire- 
place, which in winter evenings, when there was a 
roaring fire in the grate, and when both doors were 
shut, made the discussion of a plot, and of suitable 
liquid refreshments, a serious prelude to turning out 
again on to the dark staircase and into the keen air 
that blew from the river. His " Tiny Travels " have 
taken him farther west, but his poetic pen, and even 
his quaint, descriptive essays, are the results of his 
early experiences east of Temple Bar. 

Among others who were in that Fleet Street 
companionship was one of Charles Dickens's trusted 
contributors, Andrew Halliday, or Andrew Halliday 
JDuft', son of a Scotch Presbyterian minister. He came 
to London and took a situation as classical master in 
a private school at South Hackney ; but his heart was 



XXL] A STORY OF FBEBEBIGK LAWRENCE. 497 

not in teaching, and he used to escape to find 
occasional solace in the gallery of one or other of the 
theatres, till at last he escaped altogether, and took 
to writing, as well as seeing, farces and burlesques. 
He, in conjunction with Mr. Frederick Lawi'ence, may 
be said to have commenced those travesties of Sir 
Walter Scott, and other classical writers, which very 
much shocked people, who asked where such ir- 
reverence was to end; but Halliday was as efficient 
as a serious essayist as he was when composing a bur- 
lesque or preparing a spectacular drama for Drury Lane. 
Mr. Lawrence had a reputation for a very quick and 
pungent wit, and for smart and clever repartee. It 
was he Avho referred to having seen a gentleman 
eating two mutton chops, which disappeared down his 
throat like a pair of hotel carpet slippers down a well 
staircase. It is also related of him that on one 
occasion, going into a luncheon bar, where a customer 
was consuming a highly-fried sausage and mashed 
potatoes, he responded to the barmaid's question, 
" What would you like, sir ? " by retorting, " I'll take 
a hlack-and-tan one, like that gentleman's," at the 
same time pointing to the sausage. 

How the recollection of the frequenters of Fleet 
Street at this period crowd upon us ! Colonel Alfred 
Bate Richards, editor of the Morning Advertiser, 
and reputed to be the originator of the Volunteer 
movement, what a striking presence his was, with 
his tall, somewhat gaunt figure, his long moustache, his 
military bearing, like that of a heaii sahreur. Sweet- 
voiced William Fielding, Vicar Choral of St. Paul's. 

G G 



498 THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. [XXI. 

Hearty, hospitable, kindly Wharton Simpson, the great 
authority on photography, and proprietor of a journal 
devoted to it ; but an authority also on many other 
things, he being a man of multitudinous acquirements. 
Alas 1 how the register of those who have de- 
parted lengthens. But there are still friends good 
and true with whom to clasp hands in Fleet Street, 
and one whose name has not been mentioned 
before, though he long ago won a place in the 
World of Letters, and knew nearly all those who 
have walked in its highAvay for the last — let us 
not say how many years. He shall be spoken of 
by the title he has, perhaps, heard oftenest, and 
likes as well as an}' — the Founder of Clubs. To 
John Crawford Wilson was due the initiation of 
the only truly literary club of souiewhat the old 
pattern that now exists, and it is green and f3ourish- 
ing in Fleet Street — not the " Press Club," which is 
of later growth, and does invaluable work withm its 
limits, nor the. Institute of Journalists, which is not 
a club, but a serious, strenuous, professional associ- 
ation — but the " White Friars." It was instituted in 
1868, and inaugurated by a dinner at what was 
then Radley's Hotel, in Bridge Street, Blackfiiars, 
at Avhich the chair Avas taken by Henry Barnett, 
then editor of the Sunday Times, and formerly 
preacher of orthodox doctrine at the chapel m 
South Place, Finsbury, where Fox, the heterodox 
orator and free trader, was once wont to hold forth. 
The vice-chairman was Tom Hood, and there Avere 
present, besides Mr. Crawford Wilson, George Cruik- 



XXI.] THE WHITE EBIARS. 499 

shank, W. J. M. Torrens, George Augustus Sala, 
Thomas Spencer, the scientist, Hepworth Dixon, 
WilHam Boys, Thomas Hawker, Joseph Knight, Dr. 
W. B. Richardson, F. Sandys, Westland Marston, W. 
Fielding, George Painter, Barr}^ SuUivan, WiUiam 
Sawyer, and another. Many others, inchiding those 
whose names have been already mentioned hi connec- 
tion with the recent daj^s of Fleet Street, afterwards 
joined the club, but it never was, nor is it now^, a very 
numerous society. Having to remove when Radley's 
Hotel was pulled down, it migrated to the Mitre, as a fit 
and proper locality for a club which grew more strictly 
literary, and was named the White Friars. It is now 
in its own room at Anderton's Hotel, and is still 
sound and flourishing — a brotherhood given to hospi- 
tality, and the occasional entertainment of strangers 
who now and then, but not often, turn out to be a 
sort of angels, especially when they are Americans, of 
which persuasion there are frequent and inquiring 
guests and more than one member. Around the wall 
are the photographs of many past and present 
Friars ; but the brethren need not these to stir in 
their hearts the memory, or bring to their lips the 
frequent mention, of those who, though they dwell 
in the Golden Highway of the Heavenly Kingdom, 
are not far, let us humbly hope and pray, from 
these who have walked with them in loving com- 
panionship in the Highw^ay of Letters upon earth. 



INDEX. 



A'Beckett, Gilbert, 484 

Actors, Privileges and Licences to, 

202, 203, 214 
"Acts and Monuments," Fox's, 35, 

155, 158 
Addison, Joseph, 363, 365, 366, 367 
Advertisements, Duties on, 447 
Affe, The, 472 

"Alice in Wonderland," 491 
All the Year Round, 491-492 
Almonry of St. Thomas, The, 146 
Alsatia, 307-308 

Antiquaries, The Society of, 272-273 
"Angler, The Compleat," 282, 328 
Apollo Eoom, The, 264-268 
Apprentices, 178 
Ascham, Roger, 138 
Ashby-Sterry, Mr. J., 496 
Atterbury, Francis, 380 
Aubrey, John, 347-348 

"Bab Ballads," The, 495 
Bacon, Francis, 186, 252 
Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 186 
Bambridge and the Fleet Prison, 423, 

425 
Bangor House, Shoe Lane, 286 
Barbauld, Mrs., and Samuel Eichard- 

son, 407-409 
Barham, The Eev. E. H., 473 
Barnes, Dr., 123, 124 
Barrett, Henry, 498 
Barrow, Henry, 223 
Barton, Bernard, 464 
Baynard's Castle, 34, 67, 68-71, 78, 

79, 164 
Beckett, Gilbert A', 484 
Belle Sauvage Inn, 179-180 



« ' Bentley's Miscellany, " 479 

Bethlehem Hospital, 143 

Bible, The, Translations and printed 

copies of, 42, 82, 123, 124-127 
Black Friars, The, 18-20, 34, 35, 

74, 166 
Blackfriars Theatre, The, 215, 217, 

235, 237 
Blanchard, Edward Laman, 496 
Bolingbroke, Eoger, 69-71 
Bolt Court, Associations with Dr. 

Johnson, 431, 434, 435, 443 
" Bolt-in-Tun " Tavern, The, Fleet 

Street, 269 
Booksellers {see Stationers) 
Boswell and Johnson, 387, 391 
Boswell Court, 442-443 
Bowyer, William, 444 
Boys, William, 499 
Bridewell Palace, 2, 97-98, 145-146, 

148-149 
Brooks, Shirley, 492 
Brough, Mr., and the Wits' Club, 487 
Brough, John Cargill, 490 
Brough, Eobert, 490 
Brough, William, 490 
Burbage, James, 204, 211, 214, 218- 

220 
Burnand, Mr. Francis Cowley, 492 
Burning the Pope's effigy at Temple 

Bar, 341, 343 
Butler, Bishop, 380-381 
Butler, Samuel, 317 
Butterworth, Joshua Whitehead, 119 
Button's Coffee House and its Asso- 
ciations, 300, 367-368 
Byron, Henry, 494 
Byrou, Lord, 469-471 



502 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



" Campaspe,''^ 201 

Carrol, Lewis, 491 

Caxton, Willam, 82-84, 120-121 ; 
specimen of trade circular, 84 ; 
successors of, 119 

Chancery Lane, 14, 55 

Charing Cross, 41 

Chatterton, Thomas, 287-290 

Chaucer, Geoifrey, 16, 22, 31-33, 46- 
47, 51 

Cheke, Sir John, 138 

" Cheshire Cheese," The, 399, 487 

Child's Bank, 334-336 

Chi'ist's Hospital, 146-148; Associa- 
tions with Charles Lamb, 147, 
451, 456-459; with Samuel 
Taylor Coleridge, 147-148, 456; 
with Leigh Hunt, 147, 464 

City Watch, The March of the, 100- 
104 

Clarence, Lionel, Duke of, 33-34 

Clarke, "William Burstall, 14 

ClcrkemveU Neivs, The, 490 

Clifford's Inn, 57 

Coach Stands, 320 

Coaches, 183, 320 

Cockpit Alley, 285, 286 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 457-458, 
465-466 

Colet, Dr. John, 88 

" Colin Clout," Skelton's, 109 

College Hill, Upper Thames Street, 
148 

" Confessio Amantis," Grower's, 50 

Costumes in time of Edward III., 21, 
24-27 ; of EKzabeth, 180-181 ; of 
George II., 371 

Cosway, Eichard, 272 

Courier, The, 476 

Coverdale, Miles, 123, 125 

Cowley, Abraham, 277, 278 

Cowper, William, 326-327 

Coyne, Stii'ling, 484 

Crabbe, George, 450 

Crane Court, 270-271 
' Criminal Prisons of London," 486 

Cromwell, Thomas, 113, 125, 132 

Cruikshank, George, 498 



Curll, Edward, 374-375 
Curtain Theatre, The, 204 

Daily Chronicle, The, 490 

Baily News, The, 482 

Dancing, in time of Elizabeth, 169, 

170, 197 
Day, John, 156 
Debtors' Prison, The Fleet, ^, 420- 

425 
Defoe (Foe), Daniel, 314, 353-357 
"DevU" Tavern, The, 263-268, 272 
De Worde, Wynkyn, 83, 90, 119 
Dickens, Charles, 478-483 . 
Dick's Coffee House, 263 
Dixon, Hepworth, 499 
Dobbs, Sir Eichard, 145 
Dorset Gardens Theatre, The, 303-305 
Drama and Dramatists, 204, 319-320 : 

Elizabethan, 189-220 
Draper, Edward, 490 
Dryden, John, 300-302, 349, 360-361, 

364 
Duff, Andrew HalKday, 496-497 
Dimton, the publisher, 359 

Eating and drinking in the olden 

times, 27-31, 59-60, 167, 181 
Edward VI., 135-138, 139-146 
Edwards, Mr. Sutherland, 491 
Eldon, John Scott, Earl of, 426-431 
Elizabeth, Queen, 154-155, 160-162 ; 
Literature in the reign of, 175-220 
Ely Place, Holborn, 92 

Fabyan, Tliomas, &5 
"Fall of Princes," Lydgate's, 61-62 
Fetter Lane, 57, 300 
Fewter Lane {see Fetter Lane) 
Fielding, W., 499 
Figaro, The London, 483 
Fire, The Great, 325, 327, 336 
Fisher, Bishop, 88, 91 
Fleet, The, 2, 166, 257-258 
Fleet Bridge, 67 
Fleet Market, 287, 290 
Fleet Prison, 34, 67, 111-112, 116, 151, 
169, 228-229, 290-291, 420-425 



IXBEX. 



503 



Fleet Street. 3. 15, 41, oi-o5, SS-90, 
2.5.5, 274-27.5, 371-374 : in Eliza- 
beth's reign, 167. 17S-180. 184- 
ISS ; after the "Wat Tyler Eiots. 
4-5-46 : Duchess of Gloucester's 
Penance in, 70 ; reception of 
Elizabeth in. 161-162; Taverns 
in. 1S4, 263-269, 272, -331-333. 
399, 437 ; Shows in, 179, 2-56-2.57, 
372 : the Printers and Book- 
seUei-s of, 32S : Sign-boards in. 
333-334; effects of the Great 
Fire. 336 ; rebuilding, iifter the 
Great Fire, 339 ; St. Dunstan's 
Club. 41-5-41S ; during the Gor- 
don Eiots, 425-426, 431 ; ef 

Fleet Street, Associations -with — Lyd- 
gate, 62 ; Cardinal "SVolsey ; 96- 
99; Henry Vni.. 100-106"; Tot- 
teU, Jaggard. Stephens, Butter- 
worth, and Shakespeare. 118-119 ; 
"Whitchurch and Grafton, 128 ; 
Stow, 163 ; Playwriters, 20-5 ; 
Ben Jonson, 2.55,* 2.59, 263-266 ; 
Howell, 276 ; Drayton and Cow- 
ley,277 ; !MIlton.296-29S ; Pepys, 
324-32-5; Aubrey, 347; Defoe, 
3.5.5-356 , Swift, 3-57 ; Tonson, 
361: Dr. Johnson, 383, 386- 
387, 442 ; John Wilkes, 412-418 : 
Newspapers of the nineteenth 
century, 467-499 

Floiio. John, 283 

Forster, John, 479 

Fox, John. 15.5- 1.5s 

Friars. The, Black. "White, and Grey, 
18-20, 34. 3.5, .5.5, 74, 143, 146! 
166. 171, 302 

FrisweU, James Hain, 490 

FtQler, Thomas. 2.51 

FiOi, 492-493 

Gammer Gi(rfo/i''s Xeedle, 192-193 
(Warrick, David, SSS. 389, 390 
Gaunt, John of ^uke of Lancaster). 

32', 3.5-36, 38-39 
Gay and Eich, 3.58-3-59 



Gilbert. >Jr. 'WiUiam Schwenk, 49.5 
Globe Theatre. The, 204, 2:34 
Gloucester, Eleanor. Duchess of, 

67-71 
Gloucester, Humphrey. Duke of, 62, 

67-72. 130 
Gloucester, Eichard, Duke of, 79 
Goldsmith, OHver, 346. 396-402, 

403 
GorlH-Am, 194, 195-196 
Gordon Eiots. The, 425-426. 431- 

433 
Gower. John, 42, 4-3, 46-50 
Grafton, Eichard, 127-12S 
Grattan, H. E., 4S4 
Greek. Introduction of. into England, 

87 
GreyFiiars. The, 18-20, 74. 143. 143 
Grocyn, "William. 87 
Grub Street, Cripplegate, 158 



Hale. "William P.. 491 
Hall, Edward, 134 
HaUiday. Andrew, 496-497 
••'Hand and Star," The, Fleet Street 

118, 119, 120 
Hannay, James, 491 
Harding. John, 64 
Hawker, Thomas, 499 
Hazlitt, "William. 459. 453 
Henry Vrn:., 91, 92. 93, 100-103. 106, 

112-114 
Heresy, The Statute of, 52 
Heringman, Henry. 359-360 
Herrick, Eobert, 105-106, 260-261 
Hertford. Seymour, Earl of, 117- 

118 
'• Hesperides," 261 
Heywood. John, 191 
Hogarth, 286, -393-395, 412. 424 
HoUingshead, Mr. John, 491 
Hood, Thomas, 462 
Hood, Tom (the younger', 492, 493, 

498 
Hook, Theodore, 473, 475 
Hooi)er. John, Bishop of Gloucester. 

157 



>04 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTERS. 



Hospitallers, The, or Knights of St. 

John of Jerusalem, 6-11 
Hospitals— St. Bartholomew's, 143 ; 

Bethlehem, 143; St. Thomas's, 

148 
" Household Words," 482, 491 
Howard, Henry, Earl of Surrey, 

114-118 
Howell, James, 276 
" Hudibras," Butler's, 317 
Hum, John, 69-71 
Hunt, Leigh, 463-464, 467-468 

Illustrated london News, The, 487 
Ingram, Mr. Herbert, 487 
Institute of Journalists, The, 498 
" Irene," Johnson's, 388-389 

Jackson, Eichard, 454 

Jaggard, John, 119 

James I. (James VI. of Scotland), 

228, 230-232 
Jan sen, Cornelius, 238 
Jones, Inigo, 262 
" Jeames's Diary," 492 
Jerrold, Douglas, 477, 483, 484, 488 
Jerrold, William Blanchard, 489 
Jessel, Sir George, 15 
Jew's House in Chancery Lane, The, 

14 
John Bull, 473-474 
Johnson, Dr., 268, 346, 383-396, 404- 

406, 410-414, 431-443 
Jonson, Ben, 208-2C9, 213-214, 219, 

238-252, 258-265; the plays, 

etc., of, 242, 246-249 
Jourdayn, Margery, 69-71 

Kit-Kat Club, The, 376-379 
Knight, Charles, 476 
Knight, Joseph, 499 

Lamb, Charles and Mary, 147, 451- 

462, 464-467 
Lancaster, John, Duke of, 32, 35-39 
Landells, Ebenezer, 484, 485 
Latimer, Bishop, 125 



Lawrence, Frederick, 497 

Leech, John, 484 

Leigh, Henry S., 494 

Leigh, Percival, 484 

Leland,John, 133-134 

Lemon, Mark, 483, 484 

Lennox, Mrs., 268 

LUy, William, 88 

Lily (the astrologer), 269-270 

Linacre, Thomas, 87 

Lintot, Bernard, 361 

Literary Club, The, 389, 411 

Lloyd, Edward, and Lloyd's Weekly 

Newspaper, 488-490 
Lollards, The, 34 
"London Lyckpenny," Lydgate's, 

62 
london Figaio, The, 483 
" London Labour and LondonPoor," 

486 
Lord Mayor's Shows, 280 
Lovelace, Eichard, 284-285 
Lud-gate, 3, 102, 327 
Lydgate, John (Monk of Bury), 60- 

63 
Lyly and the " Euphues," 200-201 

Maclean, Mr., and Fun, 492 

Maginn, Dr. William, 474-475, 485 

Man in the Moon, The, 490 

Mansion, Colard, 83 

Marshalsea Prison, The, 37, 150-151 

Marston, Westland, 499 

MarveU, Andi-ew, 297-298 

Mary, Queen, 151, 156 

Masonic Order of Templars, 7, 8 

May-Day Sports, 58 

Mayhew, Augustus, 483, 484, 486, 

487-488 
Mayhew, Henry, 483, 484, 485, 486, 

488 
Mayhew, Horace, 483, 484, 485 
" Mermaid " Tavern, The, 259-260 
Milton, John, 297-298 
"Mitre," The, 269, 499 
Monk, General, 282-283, 323 
More, Sii- Thomas, 88, 91-95 
Morning Advertiser, The, 497 



INDEX. 



505 



Morton, Bishop of Ely, 92-93 
Mug-house Eiots, The, 419, 420 
Murray, John, 470 
Myddelton, Sir Hugh, 275-276 

Netter, Thomas, 63 
ISTewbery, Mr., the publisher, 404 
jSTew River Company, The, 275 
!N"ewspapers, Early, 311, 445-448 ; 

later, 472-499; in 1892, 448; 

tax, 447 
Nicholson, "Baron," 472-473 
Nonconformists, Early, 221 

Occleve, Thomas, 63 
Oldbourne Hall, Shoe Lane, 286 
Oliver, Isaac, 238 

Oxford University Library, 130 ; its 
dispersion, 131 

Painter, George, 499 

Paper, Duties on, 447 ; abolished, 
489 

Paston Letters, The, 84-85 

Paulet, Sir Amias, 99 

Pavy, Salathiel, 247 

Pecock, Reginald, 63-64 

Penny Cyclopcedia, The, 477 

Penny Magazine, The, 477 

Pepys, Samuel, and his Diary, 314- 
318, 322 

Percy, Lord, 35-37 

Physicians, College of, 88-89 

" Pickwick Papers," The, 479 

Poetry, Early English, 54 

Pole, Reginald, 113-114 

Pope, Alexander, 365, 368-370, 379- 
380 ; Associations with Dr. John- 
son, 384-385 

Press Club, The, 498 

Preston, Thomas, 227 

Printers (see Stationers) 

Printing, 119, 120, 127 ; introduction 
of into England 77, 80-84; 
Pynson's first book, 128 ; mono- 
polies granted by Queen Eliza- 
beth, 154 

Prowse, William Jeffery, 494 



Publishing {see Stationers' Com- 
pany) 
Punch, 483-486, 492 
Pynson, Richard, 90, 128 

Ralph Rooster Doister, 191, 192, 193 

Recreations in Olden Times, 57, 58, 
59, 170 

Reporting, Newspaper, 482 ; Par- 
liamentary debates, 445 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 389, 391, 400- 
403 

Richards, Col. Alfred Bate, 497 

Richardson, Dr. W. B., 499 

Richardson, Samuel, 405-410 

Ridley, Bishop, 144-145 

Robertson, Tom, 493 

Rogers, Samuel, 473-474, 475 

Rolls House, The, 14 

Rolls, The Master of the, 14-15 

Royal Society, The^ 270-271 

Royal Society Club^ 270 

Rump Parliament, The, 315, 323- 
324 

Sackville, Thomas, Earl of Dorset, 

194 
St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 143, 148 
St. Bride's Church, 290-291 
St. Dunstan's Church, 57, 326-328 
St. Dunstan's Club, 415-418 
St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, 11 
St. Paul's Cathedral, 2-3, 338; et 

passim 
St. Paul's School, 88, 296 
St. Thomas's Hospital, 148 
Sala, Mr. George Augustus, 491, 

499 
Salisbury Court, 55, 171, 407, 419- 

420 " 
Salisbury Court Theatre, The, 303- 

304 
Sandys, P., 499 
Satirist, The, 472 
Saturday Niyht, 492 
Savage Club, The, 492 
Savoy, The Palace of the, 33, 37, 38, 

40, 46 



506 



THE HIGHWAY OF LETTEBS. 



Sawyer. William Kingston. 493. 499 
. Scott, Mr. Clement, 495. 496 
Scott, John (Earl of Eidon). 426-431 
"Scom-ers," 358-359 
Sedan Chairs, 320 
Selden, 809, 310 
Separatists. The, 222-226 
Serjeants' Inn, 13, 55 
Seymoiu', Earl of Hertford. 117-118 
Shadwell, Thomas, 266 
Shakespeare, 235. 206-214. 217-220: 

the plays of, 217-219. 233 
Shirley, John, 65 

Shoe Lane, 00-06, 166, 281, 282-287 
Sidney, Sir Philip, 198-202 
Simpson, TMiarton. 497-498 
Skelton, John, 106-110 
Smith, Albert, 484, 490 
'^ Snob Papers," The, 492 
Society of Antiquaries, The. 272- 

273 
Somerset House, 150, 253 
'•Speke Parrot," Skelton's. 107-108. 

109-110 
Spencer, Thomas, 499 
Spenser, Edmund, 198. 228 
St(oi'h(rd, The, 474 
Stationers, 74-77, 121. 230 
Stationers' Company, The, 121-122. 

I02-I55, 206, 294-295,444 ; hall 

of, 75, 78, 292-294 ; schools of. 

295-296 
Steele, Eichard, 362, 365. 366 
Stephens. Joel, 119 
Stow, John, 163, 172-174 
Strode. Ealph, 47 
Suffolk. Duke of, 71-73 
Sullivan, Barry, 499 
Sullivan, Sir Arthm-, 495 
S/o/dai/ T(/,}es, T/)c, 498 
SmTey, Henry Howard. Earl of. 

112, lli-lVs 
Sutherland Edwards, Mr.. 491 
Swift, Dean, 357-359 

Taylor, Tom, 492 

Templars, The Order of Knights, 
4-11 : the badge of the Order, 6 



Temple, The. Eleet Street, 8-12, 55, 
171, 357, 450 : seizure of property 
in, by Edward I., 10 ; plucking 
the red and white roses, 79 ; 
associations with — Selden, 308 ; 
Elias Ashmole, 321 : Goldsmith, 
398 ; Charles and Mary Lamb, 
451, 452-461 

Temple, The Old, Holbome, 4-5 

TemjDle Bar. 171, 343-347 

Tennyson. Lord, 332, 486 

Thackeray. 4Sc, 492 

Theatres,^ Early, 204-205, 236-237 : 
the Curtain, 204 : the Globe, 
204, 2U ; the Blackfriars, 215, 
217, 235-237; the Salisbury 
Court, 303-304: the Dorset 
Gardens. 303-306: the White- 
friars. 303 

Thomas, Mr. W. Moy, 491 

Thrale, Mrs., 395-396, 437, 440 

Tiptofc, John, Earl of Worcester. 131 

Tokenhouse Yard, 330 

Tokens, Tradesmen's, 328-331, 333 

Tonsoa, Jacob, 360-361, 375-376 

Toirens, W. J. M., 499 

Tottell, Eichard, 118-119 

TuH-i?, The, 472 

TralH,The,4:d{)-^%\ 

Treloar, Mr. Alderman, 418 

" Troilus and Cressida," Chaucer's, 
47 

Tnrner, Godfrey Wordsworth, 490 

Tyndal, William, 123-125 

Tyler, Wat, 43-44 

Udall, Xicholas, 191 
"ftopia," More's, 94 

Van Dyck, Sir Anthony, 238 

Toltake, 370-371 

'' Yox Clamantis," Gower's, 43, 46 

Walton, Izaak, 281-282 

Warwick, Eichard Xevil, Earl of, 

78-79 
Watchman (sixteenth century), 104 
Welcome Gxesf, The, 491 



IXDEX. 



507 



Westminster : Associations uith 

Caxton, 83-84 
Whitchurch, the printer, 128 
VThite Friars. The, 18-20, oo. 74, 

17L 3U2 
'^Vhite Friars Club, The, 498-499 
Whitefriars, Precinct of, and the 

Privilege of Sanctuarv. 303-308, 

419 
Whitefiiars Theati-e, The, SO 3 
Whittington, Sir Eichard, 6o. 74, 148 
"Why Come Ye Xot to Court •-'' 

Skelton's, IDS, 109 
Wilkes, .John. 412-418. 431 



Will's Coffes Hous2, 300, 3G3, 364 

366 
Wills, W.H..434 
Wilson, Ml-. John CraTvford. 498 
Wits Club, The, 487 
Wolsey, Cardinal, 95, 96-99, 110 : 

Skelton's satires upon, 107-110 
Wood's Hotel, Fumival's Inn, 5 
Worcester. John Tiptoft, Earl of, 131 
Wren, Sii- Chi'istopher, 89, 337-339 
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 112-115, 152 
WycKiie, John, 34-36. 42. 43 

Yates. Mr. Edmund, 490 



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(724)779-2111 



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013 761304 9 # 



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